The Pain Beneath the Surface
by WhisperedTruths
Summary: Logan chose money over love, breaking her. After picking them up and naively thinking she could never get hurt again she realizes just how wrong she is. This time, Logan wants to help fix her. But Rory stubbornly feels that she cannot be fixed.
1. Prologue

Don't own Gilmore Girls.

The Pain Beneath the Surface

Prologue

He laid still next to her naked body. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her back was to him, but not in anger. He was leaning slightly over her, tracing his hand up and down her side caressing her hip to her breast. He softly placed kisses on the surface of her ivory skin. They didn't need sex to be intimate.

He loved watching her sleep. She was always so beautiful in her peaceful state. It was an added bonus that she couldn't talk back to him. And every once in awhile a smile would grace her lips and he would know that it was because of him.

She turned her head to him, looking over her shoulder. Her eyes half closed but half open. Her sapphire eyes were glowing in the moonlight coming through her window. He loved her eyes. He loved her.

"What are you doing?" She asked him. She didn't bother to wipe the sleep out of her eyes. Nor did she stop smiling at him. He wondered how he had been so lucky to find her.

"Memorizing you." He whispered into her ear. Her diamond stud earrings sparkling in the soft glow from the moon. He wondered who had given them to her. Was it an old boyfriend? Her mother? Her grandparents? He wished he could have given them to her. She wore them all the time. She hardly ever took them out. They were so precious to her, he knew. He wished he had given something to her that was equally precious.

"Oh." She smiled bigger.

Her smiled started to fade and he would do anything to make her smile again. But the underlying meaning in his words had already reached her sleepy mind. He knew his words wouldn't be lost on her.

"Oh." She let out, her eyes pained and wide. She wanted to cry. But not in front of him. Not in front of the man that meant everything to her.

"Get out." She seethed at him. He tried to hold onto her for a little longer. Tell her he didn't want to, it wasn't his choice. But she was smarter than that. She knew he was just being scummy, getting a quick lay in before breaking her.

"Rory." She ignored him and wrapped the blanket closer around her body. She made sure he couldn't get one last look at her.

"I love you." He pleading with her. He dropped to his knees, exposing his nakedness. He clasped his hands together like he was praying to god. He was, in a sense, he was praying, begging, pleading for her to listen to him. But it was futile, he knew. He couldn't be with her, he made the wrong choice and couldn't take it back. He knew she wouldn't let him.

"You love your money." She hissed at him. Her words burned his skin and struck oil. His heart was bleeding. How could she think he was choosing money over her? Oh, right. Because he was. His evil father had told him to choose, money or love. And all he had ever known was money.

"Get out!" Tears were stubbornly falling from her eyes. The eyes he loved so much. It pained him to think the last time he'll ever see those eyes were with tears spilling out of them. Never mind he caused those tears.

"Please." She cried. His shoulders sank. He grabbed his pants and pulled them on quickly like a man on the run from a one night stand. He searched the dark room for other articles of clothing that belonged to him. He left the room listening to her sobbing. He wished he could hold her and make it all better. He wished he could kill the guy that made her cry. Right, he thought, that's me.

He got into his car and quickly drove away from the Gilmore pool house. He pulled into a Seven Eleven parking lot and cried. Lone tears fell from his face and he tasted the salty substance which was so unfamiliar to him. He turned his sadness into anger and pounded his fist on the steering wheel. The horn blared out symbolizing that something bad was going to happen. But what could be worse?

The horn simply embedded itself into his brain and every time he was with a girl he would hear it telling him he was going to hurt this one too. That summer was unbearable. He could sleep with thousands of girls, women even, but the vision of Rory crying naked in her sheets wouldn't stop haunting him.

He returned to Yale in the fall. He hoped school would help take his mind off her and since she had dropped out to do some thinking he wouldn't have to worry about running into her. But the whole campus reminded him of her, Branford dorm, his dorm, the library, the Yale Daily News office, the pub, the classrooms, the coffee kiosks, etc. And just today as he was walking around the corner to get coffee, the far one that she never went to because the coffee was just ok, but he could have sworn he saw her standing there in line for the just ok coffee.

She had wallowed immensely after that night. But she didn't do it right. She wasn't on speaking terms with her mom, Lane was out of town on a tour, Paris had heard about her recent decision to drop out and was furious, she thought about Stephanie but she was Logan friend, and Marty had offered but he was a guy. Her grandparents had left town for Martha's Vineyard the week before so they weren't an option.

She ended up losing thirty pounds. She didn't leave the pool house to eat, to stock up on food, or even for coffee. She didn't order in either. She only starved for the first week. After that she became numb. By the end of July she couldn't fit into her clothes and she was so frail a sneeze could break her bones. She was living off water and whatever coffee she had stocked in her pseudo apartment. She started to eat, just whatever she already had. She started to develop an appetite for stale cheetos.

One day she motivated herself enough to take a shower and was hit with a dizzy spell that lasted forever. She had to sit down in the tub for fear she'd fall. She knew something was wrong. When the room stopped spinning she slowly stood up and stepped out of the scale. She figured she would have to deduct a few pounds because of the water. When she looked down and the scale read 99 pounds she almost fainted. She stepped off and looked into the mirror. She looked almost dead. She wanted to hit herself for becoming the kind a girl that couldn't survive without a boyfriend.

That's what she told her mother's voicemail when she called later that day. She rambled on about how she was that girl and that she hated herself for it. She whimpered into the phone "I need you now so much. I'm scared." She must have sounded really pathetic because a half hour later her mom was knocking at the door. She was too weak to get up, too weak to yell for her mother to come in at all. Her mother, she knew, wouldn't just walk away.

The door slid open and she heard her mother shout for her. When her mom did find her she was on the bathroom floor, still naked and still wet. Her mom helped her up, giving a look of surprise or shock at how light she was. But nevertheless her mom helped to her bed and grabbed a blanket while wincing at the sight of her daughters rib bones. "What happened to you?" She asked Rory. All she got was a slight shrug of the shoulders and some waterworks.

As a mother Lorelai did the only thing she could. She nursed her baby back to health. She ordered pizza and salad and chips and coffee and ice cream. Just about anything Luke could deliver. She clothed her daughter and when Rory fell asleep she began to straighten up the pool house. She wondered what had happened to Rory. She could barely understand her voicemail message. At first she thought Rory was doing some drunk dialing since they hadn't spoken since mid May. But then she heard the pathetic whimper of her daughter needing her and being scared. It reminded her so much of how she felt when Luke broke up with her. She sped all the way until she was at her daughter's current residence. It frightened her when there was no answer.

"Oh god." She sat down on the couch reliving the moment when she thought her daughter was lying somewhere dead. She looked at the mess, the half eaten bag of cheetos the countess numbers of water bottles. The half empty, half full glasses of water spread about the room. She wondered how things had gotten this bad.

Luke arrived with tons of food. He had many questions, most went unanswered. He caught a glimpse of Rory when she came out the room for some water. Her clothes were too big and she looked like she barely slept. She also looked like she had been crying.

"I brought cheese fries. I know you like them." Luke softly said, but the room was so quiet to begin with it sounded like he was yelling. Rory smiled and wanted to tell him she wasn't really hungry. But she had to eat. So she came closer, avoiding Luke the best she could. Men are evil, she thought.

Lorelai caught the drift and told Luke to leave, that she could handle it now. He was relieved and left. Lorelai put all the food and coffee on the table and told Rory to dig in. It took awhile but eventually they had eaten all the food and had re-bonded. Rory asked if it was too late to go back to Yale.

Lorelai knew Rory was running. She was never one to deal with things head on. But since this was what she wanted, she couldn't deny her daughter. She said she'd get her registered no matter what. Many jokes about sleeping with the dean came her way but she was happy.

"Hun. You deserve better than him." Lorelai told her daughter the day Rory moved into her dorm. She was living in a single this time. She didn't want a crazy Paris anymore.

"What if he's the best I can do?" Rory responded. The thought pained them both.

A week after school started Rory had mapped out a routine that avoided Logan and all his friends. It also helped that she was still underweight and therefore unrecognizable. It wasn't easy to gain weight when you had to, she noted. When you didn't want the extra pounds you'd get them, she bitterly thought. It was hard enough convincing her mom she would eat three meals a day at least, but now she had to convince herself. The urge to not eat was still embedded into her brain. Her stomach was still numb.

After getting her coffee from the just okay kiosk she turned around and saw Logan. She dropped her coffee. Instead of running she bent down to pick it up. He probably forgot who she was by now.

He didn't. He saw the Rory look alike turn around and sucked in his breath. It couldn't be her, she was too thin. But then her eyes met his and he knew it was her. What she was doing at Yale, he didn't know. He saw her recognize him, he couldn't miss that pained expression that plagued her pale face. Then she dropped her coffee, something a Gilmore never did. He reasoned that it couldn't be her and walked away. In the back of his mind he knew it was her on the ground trying to control her tears. He didn't just hurt her, he killed her.

Huntzbergers didn't deal with guilt too well. He got back to his dorm and called Finn, Colin, Robert and Steph out of class to go get drunk with him. Finn easily came. Colin texted a complaint but came anyway. Robert didn't have class right then. Steph was glad for an excuse to get out of lecture so she happily came. On her way to the pub she ran into Rory, spilling her coffee all over Rory. Rory cursed, something Steph knew she didn't do often. She apologized and offered to buy her a new sweater. Rory looked up at Steph and declined the offer. She made up some excuse like needing to wash her hair and left.

Steph couldn't move for a few minutes. Rory looked so unhealthy. She looked so depressed and not in a deeply sad way. Steph knew Huntzberger broke up with her for money. She hated him for that but understood since she too came from money. But having just looked at Rory she lost her grasp on the reasoning. She marched her way to the pub and when she spotted Logan she waltzed up to him and smacked him in the jaw. Her ruby ring broke into pieces but it was worth it seeing Logan's blood drip from his face.

"I'm sure I deserved that. But what for?" He solemnly asked the blonde.

"Have you seen Rory, lately. She looks like death. And I'm not exaggerating." She screamed at the big blonde bully. Logan let out a long breath but didn't say anything. He drank his scotch and left the bar just as Finn strolled in.

"Hey mate, where you going?" Finn shrugged his shoulders after getting no response and ordered a drink.

Logan strolled the campus looking for her. He needed to see her. He went to everyplace she could be, then changed gears and checked everywhere she wouldn't normally be. He found her reading a book at the soccer field. He walked up to her and sat down next to her. She didn't look up, either because she knew it was him or didn't care who it was.

"Ace." He stated.

"What? Didn't do a good enough job and want to do it again." She never looked up at him. Her words hurt him. Like he would ever want to hurt her again.

"Rory no." He paused. She had looked up at him and he could see her tears.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"Look at me, Logan. Do I look okay?" He shook his head no. He looked down. He watched her pick up her purse. He watched her feet walk away from him. He didn't have the balls to look up and watch her walk away the normal way.

"You deserve better than me." He whispered into the air. If only the wind could carry words.

He never saw her after that. He heard she was dating a nice man. Todd was his name, he thinks. Todd was a commoner, had no money tied to his name. He always thought Rory could better than him and he figured a man with no money would treat her better.

If only he knew how wrong he was…


	2. Meeting Todd

For disclaimer refer to prologue.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful and positive reveiws. Don't worry this will eventually be Rory/Logan. Key word: eventually.

Chapter One: Meeting Todd

It was a perfectly clear November afternoon. The rain had stopped pitter pattering on the pavement in the New Haven campus. The sun was making an unexpected appearance and the students all over the campus were taking advantage of the good weather. Frat boys were tossing a football back and forth to each other while girls were walking the New Haven streets, wearing last springs sandals, with their friends glad to take a break from classes. And Rory, as could be expected, was holed away in her single dorm room studying for her finals which were three weeks to come.

Since her breakup with Huntzberger she hardly got out. It seemed that he was everywhere, when in truth she hadn't actually seen him since the day at the soccer field. She had seen his friends and went through great troubles trying to avoid them or making up excuses to leave. They reminded her too much of Logan and she just wanted to avoid thinking about him. Thinking about his annoying smirk, him calling her Ace, the smell of his aftershave… Oh yeah, she was getting over him.

Rory smiled as she closed her eyes and remembered him, every flaw and every perfection. She envisioned him hovering over her breathing heavy, his sweat rolling off his perfectly toned abs and falling onto her bare stomach, his hand softly and sometimes roughly touching her breasts. Her hand snaked it's way into her pants. The phone rang. Rory jumped out of her seat, removing her hand in the process. She turned about seven shades of red, like she was caught doing something she shouldn't be doing. She looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching even though she lived alone. She picked up her phone after a few rings, after a few seconds to regain her composure and make it sound like she was the perfectly innocent princess from small town Stars Hollow.

"Hello?" She asked, she didn't know why she posed it as a question.

"Okay two problems with that statement." Her mother began.

"One, you shouldn't be in your dorm. Two were you doing something dirty, or on second thought someone?" Rory could always count on her mother to know everything. But that didn't mean she wasn't going to deny it.

"One I'm studying for finals. And two, ew." She answered in her usual verbatim.

"One finals aren't for three weeks, two good answer mommy doesn't really want to know."

"You're horrible. Besides I have to study now because I usually get the flu the first or second week in December, flu shot or not, so really I'm just planning ahead so when I do get sick I can concentrate on getting better instead of stressing over finals. And also if you don't like the way I am doing things then I could always drop out and have fun all the time." She reasoned with her mom. She knew with her last point she was calling in the big guys, but hey, she had something to hide.

"Like I believe that. I won't ask anymore questions Hun." Her mom obviously knew when a fight was won. She was a little suspicious that her mom gave up that easily but she wasn't really in the mood to question it.

"So Rory, kid, fruit of my loins," Rory interrupted with a squeal of disgust.

"You haven't been dating. Which is not a big deal, don't get me wrong. It's just your singleness had annoyed one Emily Gilmore who has a date for you on Friday. You may want to get sick earlier." Lorelai explained.

"Ugh. Why does she do this to me? I'm not ready to put my heart out on the line again." Rory groaned into the phone. She heard her mother sigh.

"I'm sorry to hear that kid, but…" Her mother's voice was full of pity.

"No. No buts. Tell Grandma that I got hit by a car and died a long and agonizing _single_ death."

"Well that might be a little hard." Her mom started.

"Well you're the expert at getting out of things, so come up with something. I have some studying to do." Rory hung up the phone in anger. She hated people pitying her.

She tried to study some but couldn't concentrate. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Paris. She needed to get out. Paris ended up babysitting the Chilton sluts better known as Madeline and Louise. It wasn't exactly what she had in mind when she asked Paris to go out to the pub with her.

"Great, I could use some normalcy." Paris told her through the phone.

"No no, it's okay. I just remembered I have to wash my hair or something just as stupid but will take me the rest of the afternoon and night to do." She desperately didn't want to go out with those two, who only seemed to want to get laid and talk about boys. She was met with a click and ten minutes later, as expected, Paris arrived with her goonies in tow.

"Rory." Madeline squealed in delight. The black haired beauty skipped up to her and hugged her. It wasn't even a good hug, it was an 'I-don't-want-to-actually-touch-you' hug. Louise came up and said hi. The two of them had never really gotten along.

Rory watched suspiciously as Madeline and Louise looked around her dorm. Louise went into the bathroom while Madeline was opening cupboards in her kitchen.

"Wow, Rory you've got a lot of condoms here. Who's the guy?" Louise asked walking out of the bathroom. Madeline grabbed a couple bottles of alcohol.

"Most of these are almost empty, somebody's been partying." Madeline remarked before Rory even had time to blush at Louise's comment.

"I'm an alcoholic." She joked, completely ignoring Louise. Louise, however, waved the condoms around in the air to remind her of the question.

"Perhaps the question you are looking for is, You're almost out of condoms, who's the guy?" Paris answered for her. Rory shot her a look of contempt.

"Oh, left over condoms from a relationship gone sour." Louise commented and turned around to put the condoms back to their original spot.

"Yeah, that's it." Rory muttered under her breath.

Eventually she was dragged out of her dorm by six strong arms. They threw her into the back of a car and took away her keys. She wasn't allowed to ask questions. She was under direct orders to have fun, get drunk, and to get laid. When the car stopped Rory looked out the window and saw a neon green sign for a hip dance club. She groaned. She was in for a night of crude rap music, overpriced drinks and inappropriate groping from both genders.

Rory was being stubborn. She refused to play by the three musketeers' rules. So she was sitting on the bar stool moping over her Irish coffee. She wasn't really moping. The bartender was cute and funny and they joked around a bit.

"You know it's always the depressed people who drink Irish coffee." He had joked to her. She laughed and threw her hand against his chest flirtatiously.

"I'm gay." He flat out told her and she did her best impression of an 'I'm-hurt' face. He called her on it.

"I'm not interested." She went on to explain that she didn't want her friends to drag her out onto the dance floor. He laughed with her. Soon he was replaced by another bartender who wasn't as fun.

Her eyes wandered. She was a little drunk at the time, but refused to show it. It was only nine o'clock at night. She had been drinking since a little after four. Eventually her eyes locked on a man about six feet tall with sandy brown hair. He was built but not in an Arnold Schwarzenegger way. She couldn't quite make out his eyes. They were dark and mysterious. She liked it.

Paris sat in the stool next to her and followed her gaze. She smirked and called her two stooges over. They looked over Rory's shoulder and looked at the man. All of this was done without Rory knowing. Louise approved of him by growling and sticking her finger into her mouth then pulling it out slowly in a sexy gesture. Madeline nodded her head in approval. Paris was Paris and interrupted Rory's staring.

"Ask him to dance." Paris suggested. She was having problems envisioning Rory with this guy.

"You should get his number." Madeline suggested. She knew Rory was shy when it came to boys so she suggested something timid.

"You should do him." Louise told her in her sex voice.

Rory didn't know what made her get up and ask him to dance. Maybe it was all the alcohol, maybe she was tired of being lonely or it could have been the fact that Paris took some initiative and pushed her off her stool. She landed in a heap on the floor but got up and made her way through the crowd to mysterious eyes. She had too much pride to have just gotten back up in her stool.

She tapped him on the shoulder and when he turned around she gave him a shy smile. He smiled back at her, obviously not interested.

"Hey, um, do you want to dance?" She asked him. She felt like a little girl who was afraid of men. He hesitated.

"If anything to just save me from humiliation. My friends think I'm lonely, and need to get laid. But I am just coming out of a relationship, actually that's not true, it's been a few months. Anyway they dragged me here and it's not really my style to take the first move, or to be here in the first place. But I just want my friends to leave me alone or I'll have to find new ones and you know how that goes." He smiled during her rant.

"And oh, look at that, I am rambling." She laughed at herself.

"It's cute." He finally spoke. He grabbed her hand and dragged her out to the dance floor as a slow song came on.

"Do you want to dance, still?" He asked thinking the change in song would change her mind.

"No. Yeah. This is better actually, I can actually slow dance. Not much to it, you know?" She rambled again. He laughed again.

"I wish I could tell you I'm not usually like this." She went on and they started to dance.

"But you are?" He clarified. She nodded her head and laughed.

"I'm Rory by the way." She looked up at him as she told him this.

"Todd." He whispered into her ear. She could barely hear him.

Forty five minutes later, six shots of vodka later. Todd took her home. She was unsuccessful in finding the three rascals she called friends. She didn't know what possessed her to go home with Todd. She wasn't really a sleep-with-someone-you-just-met kind of girl. She blamed it on the booze.

The next morning Rory hurried out of his apartment disgusted with herself. She couldn't believe she had just had sex. It was so unlike her. But maybe that killer headache she had could justify her act. She looked at the naked form of the man she had had sex with and couldn't remember his name. She wandered if she ever knew his name.

When she got back to the campus it was covered in early morning snow. The first snow of the season. This year it had come really late. She wanted to turn back around and go to Stars Hollow so she and her mom could have their annual snow walk. However, the urge to take a shower and drink coffee won.

Rory was about to put her key into the door lock when she realized she didn't have her keys. She muttered un-Rory like words and kicked her door in anger. She was genuinely surprised when the door opened. Her first thought was 'I didn't know I kicked it that hard' then she noticed the person hiding behind the door. She gasped a little before subconsciously smoothing out her hair which screamed sex.

"Good morning Rory." Louise smirked while hiding behind the door.

"Ah geeze." Rory groaned. Inside her dorm were two passed out girls, a half naked Doyle, a nude Louise, and empty bottles of her alcohol. That was in the living room area. She didn't even want to look in her bedroom.

"So was he good?" Louise asked in her know it all way. Rory stopped where she was and mimicked the spitting image of a deer caught in headlights.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She feigned innocence. Louise saw right through it. She had no intention of letting it go but decided to wait until she had backup, i.e. the sleeping beauties.

"Do I want to go in my room?" Rory asked with a sigh.

"Depends." Louise shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"You have five minutes to get everybody dressed and out of here before I kick you out on your naked ass." Rory ordered. She walked into her bathroom and brushed her teeth. She didn't have enough time to take a shower if she was going to make good on her threat.

When she came out exactly five minutes later, that's right she timed it, she found the place tidy and the three girls in clothes but not gone.

"Erg. Get out." She didn't have the energy to scream.

"We got rid of the boys and don't worry your bed was used for nothing sexual. The floor on the other hand could use some shampooing." Paris explained the best she could with a hang over.

"So Rory when did you get home?" Madeline asked cheerfully. It was like that girl was on Prozac or some other happy pill.

"She just got home." Louise answered for her. Rory shot her famous withering look towards the culprit. Louise turned away shocked that Rory could look that mean.

"So was he good?" Madeline asked just as Louise did moments earlier.

"Errg. Get out." She shouted. It wasn't actually a shout, she was just speaking at normal volume which was loud to the hung over crowd.

"Want a beer?" Paris suddenly interrupted.

"You know, hair of the dog." Paris elaborated. All the girls, including Rory, nodded their head.

"So Rory, was he any good?" Paris repeated after she handed each of them a beer. Rory sighed. She wasn't getting out of it.

"What if I told you I just slept on his couch because you left without me?"

"I'd say that's bullshit and then shout it out of you." Paris answered, her volume increasing with each syllable.

"I don't remember, okay?" She screamed at the girls then walked into her bathroom and slammed the door. She turned on the shower and stepped in. It felt good to wash away the sweat and dirt. It felt good to get clean.

A few days later Rory was bedridden with the flu when her cell phone rang. She sleepily grabbed it, thinking it was her mom.

"What?" She grumbled into the phone. She hated the fact that Louise, Madeline and Paris had dragged her away from early final study and now she had to study while she was sick.

"Is this Rory?" A man asked. She prayed to god it wasn't the man her grandmother was setting her up with.

"Depends, who are you?" She was being rude, she knew. But she was sick so it was okay.

"This is Todd. We met at the dance club a few days ago." Rory who was drinking some coffee as he said this spit it out.

"Oh no. Just great. Errg." She muttered while trying to clean up her sheets.

"Not the reaction I was hoping for." He said into the phone.

"No, it's not you. I spilled my coffee." She explained.

"Oh right. I'll get to the point. Do you have plans on Friday?" He asked.

"Like a date?" She clarified.

"Yeah." He answered.

"Oh I can't." Luckily for her she still had those Friday night dinners so she didn't have to come up with an excuse. Besides since when did one night stands call.

"Ah. Again, wasn't expecting that. You really know how to let 'em down, don't you?" His voice was sounding so disappointed. She felt sympathetic for him and little cocky since he really wanted to go out with her.

"I have a prior engagement that night. Family obligations, you know." She explained. At least he wouldn't feel like she was blowing him off because she didn't want to go out with him, which technically was the case.

"Oh yeah. Well actually I don't know. I don't have much of a family." Rory rolled her eyes, he was playing the sympathy card.

"I'm not really feeling too well, the flu. But I'll tell you what if I feel better on Saturday we can go out and talk." She silently whined. She didn't want to go out with him.

"Hey that sounds great. I really hope you feel better."

"Yeah yeah, I bet you do." She muttered under her breath, thinking he only wanted her for sex.

"It's not like okay." He got defensive and with good reason.

They spoke for a little while longer planning out what their date would be like if she felt better. They planned to meet at the restaurant so their would be no implication of sex. He joked that he didn't want to sleep with a sick person, she feigned hurt. It turned out that they hit a tangent and chatted for almost an hour. When Rory hung up she threw her books to the ground. She wanted to get to know him some more, so she had to get better. Screw finals!

A soft knock on her door interrupted her and Rory cursed a little while stumbling out of bed. She had just fallen into her REM cycle so the unpleasant noise woke her up and her body felt heavy. She answered the door and saw her mother smiling back at her.

"Look at me. I'm sick. I don't have time for guessing games." Rory grumbled. Not only did she feel sick, but she sounded it and looked it. Her mom smiled sympathetically at her and then pushed her way into the small one person suite.

"You hate me." Rory went on.

"No. No I don't. It's just you're sick and all alone. There is nobody to take care of you." Rory rolled her eyes.

"I think I'm old enough to take care of myself." She walked over to the couch and practically passed out on it. She fell on something hard and jarring. She lifted the pillow and pulled out an empty tequila bottle. She imagined smacking Paris hard the next time she saw her. She placed the bottle on the table then laid down again only to feel another bottle poking her. She got off the couch and removed the cushions.

Lorelai laughed. Rory shot her a look. She stopped laughing. She walked over to the couch and Rory. She then dragged Rory, who was still removing empty bottles from her couch, to her bed. She motherly tucked Rory into bed and kissed her forehead.

"Wow, you're hot." Lorelai remarked. She placed her hand on Rory's forehead.

"Yeah, tell that to my Saturday date." Rory laughed in a scratchy phlegm infected voice. Lorelai didn't pay attention to Rory she was too busy looking for a thermometer. Rory started coughing. Lorelai rushed over Rory.

"I'm not dying, you know." Lorelai stuck out her bottom lip and moved her eyebrows closer together perfecting the puppy dog look.

"Let mommy help."

"You have no life, do you?" Rory laughed.

"Alright that's it. I can only take so much abuse. Go to sleep young lady! And no more partying." She added the last bit in reference to all the hidden empty bottles.

Saturday came much too quickly for Rory. She hadn't felt any better. She had dragged herself out of bed Friday night for dinner and when she got there her Grandparents took one look at her and sent her home. It seemed that this flu bug just wouldn't leave her alone. She hoped it would be gone by Finals.

It was five o'clock in the evening on Saturday. She hadn't been able to get out of bed all day except to go to the bathroom and pay the delivery man. Her mom had offered to spend the weekend with her, but she didn't sound too good on the phone. It didn't make sense to have a sick person take care of her.

She tried to get up and get ready for her date but made it as far as taking off the covers before giving up. She grabbed her cell phone. It was time to cancel on Todd. She hoped he would be somewhat understanding. Boy, was she wrong…

Hey, so not my best chapter, in my opinion. The story will really start around the third or fourth chapter. This is just more of some back story.


	3. One Night Stand

Chapter Two: One Night Stand

Todd was an understanding man. His father had raised him that way. But his mother also taught him to never take no as an answer. He listened to her ramble on and on about not wanting to cancel, not wanting to get him sick and having to study for midterms because her friends had dragged her out a few days ago during her study session. He laughed and she accused him of not caring that it was physically impossible for her to get out of bed.

"Fine, fine. I understand."

"It was probably you who got me sick in the first place." She cynically directed at him. He feigned hurt.

"Hey! WhatchatalkingboutWillis?" He threw out a pop culture reference and heard a laugh at the other end.

"They say laughter is the bed medicine."

"My chest hurts now, and I lost my voice." She pouted over the phone in her hoarse voice.

"Poor baby. Maybe I should come over and play doctor." He offered jokingly but hoped she'd say yes.

"Sorry to disappoint but I don't do role playing." She coughed into the phone. Her statement gave him a shocked look.

"No, I think you misunderstood." Thinking she was referring to sex. She never corrected him, she fell into another coughing attack.

The two said their goodbyes. Todd hung up his phone and plopped down in his couch. He ripped the tag off his new shirt and put his feet on the table. He was supposed to call Rory back in a few days to reschedule but he wanted to see her now. His fists clenched in anger at her for getting sick. He looked down and realized what he was doing. He stopped. He had anger issues. But it was getting under control.

His mother was a bitch. She really was. She never took no as an answer. She expected to be treated like a queen instead of the white trash she really was. It took Todd many years to come to that conclusion. His mother didn't allow people to make mistakes. When was eleven and fell off his bike breaking his wrist his mother screamed at him for hours because the x-rays cost a fortune. She was always so concerned with money. He always had to go to the good will to get clothes, he was never allowed to wear anything new. Once his father had bought him some new Nike shoes for basketball and he was so excited. He could finally understand why all the other kids got excited about the holidays. But then his mother had come home and took them away saying that they couldn't afford new shoes for him.

"Toddy we can't afford these. Do you want to live in a tailor park all your life?" She had said to him. He had shook his head like a good boy and took off the shoes for her to take back. He had run out of the tailor crying. He ended up at the rich side of town. He picked a random house and knocked a the front door.

"I don't eat much. I don't need any affection. Just a place to sleep." He told the woman who answered the door while out of breath from all the running.

Mrs. Forest ended up taking him back to the trailer park. She looked at him with pity but told him things would get better at some point in his life. When he walked into the tin can he saw his father hit his mother. All he could think was that it was about time.

"You were only supposed to be a one night stand." His mother shouted at his father. Todd couldn't help but wince. He was ten then. He didn't notice his mother's tears or his father's cold expression.

"You can't do better than me, Melissa. I give you everything." His father had yelled back. Todd nodded his head in agreement. He thought his mother deserved it.

"We can't afford these luxuries, Kevin. We have no money." She retaliated. She turned around and saw Todd standing in the doorway. She walked over to him. And knelt at his level.

"Daddy's just angry." She told him in a sickening sweet voice. She didn't know what else to say. Although her husband was wrong in hitting her, she just didn't know how to explain it to her son. She didn't even have a way out if she wanted to leave. She had no where to go and take her son.

Todd grew up in an abusive household after that. He always took his father's side because even though his father couldn't show affection he spoiled him with fancy new toys and clothes. Todd held his father in the highest of regards for quieting his penny pincher mother.

Two years ago his mother had died. He was only nineteen and despite the fact that he hated the woman he mourned. He had been living on his own for almost a year and could clearly understand her issue with money. He also realized that she was the victim in it all. But his new found realization could erase years of hate.

He also knew that day when his father had called and told him his mother was dead that his old man had done it. His father had lost his temper and went a little too far. He grew to hate his father after that. He wished he still had a chance to tell his mother he loved her but his father took it away.

He remembered that on his last birthday with his parents. He joked around making chauvinistic remarks. His mom gave him a piece of the small cake she had baked and he scowled at how small it was. His mom went back to the little kitchen they had and gave him her piece as well. When she handed it to him she whispered in his ear.

"No woman will love you if you keep acting like your father." Todd would never forget those words. But by the time they registered in his head he was living in a small apartment in Connecticut. His mother was dead and his last girlfriend walked out on him telling him he was only good enough to be a one night stand, nothing more.

Todd changed his ways but eventually his father snuck in. He started taking anger management classes at the Hartford Community college. He started wanted more in his life. He decided that he would stop being a sexist pig. He swore to himself to never become his father and hit a woman. But deep inside, Todd knew he already was.

"I'm so glad you could come." Todd smiled at Rory on their eighteenth month anniversary. She had finals and graduation so he didn't think she would make it. He was ecstatic when she finally did come.

"Of course I came." She gently laughed. He stood up as she sat down in efforts of being a gentlemen.

"What was that?" She looked at him like he was crazy.

"Chivalry, my dear." He answered.

"You look nervous." She asked him after the main course. They had ordered dessert and were just waiting for the waiter to get it for them.

"You're not going to propose are you?" She laughed and he laughed nervously with her.

"Of course not. I know you don't want to get married for a while." She raised her eyebrow so he could continue.

"You know I'd never hurt you, right?" She nodded skeptical of what he was getting at. If this wasn't a proposal then what was it.

"You know I love you, right?" He asked. She nodded again and was about to say it back but he stopped her.

"Well see I have this problem." She looked at him confused and he smiled.

"I have newly acquired this space, some people would call it an apartment, with my newly acquired purpose, or as commoners would say a job, and well this space and this purpose is located in another state, New York to be exact. And see I know how much you love your personal space but I was wondering, if you'd come with me." He babbled. He noticed exactly when she got the point of his rant because her face lit up like the sun.

"You're asking me to move to New York with you?" She clarified in case somewhere in his rant he didn't imply that.

"Uh huh." He nodded. Rory leaned across the table and kissed him. It was a timid kiss only because she didn't like public displays of affection. He smiled at her.

"So you will?"

"Uh huh." They stared at each other smiling until their dessert was brought out. Todd watched as she dove into her chocolate mouse. He looked down and started taking small bites of his cheesecake.

"Todd?" She asked at her doorstop. He thought she might invite him in.

"You know if you proposed tonight, I'd have said yes." She walked into her apartment and closed the door. She had to do some studying and write a speech because she was asked to for graduation. After she closed the door she slid down the frame of the door. She was actually disappointed that he didn't purpose.

"Hello offspring." Lorelai answered the phone.

"Mom, I'm moving to New York."

"Um okay. Wait, what about graduation? Are finals that hard?" Lorelai asked, sometimes she felt like she didn't know her own daughter.

"Mom, why would you think that?"

"Well not too long ago you were dropping out of school." Lorelai explained her reaction.

"Well after graduation I'm moving to New York with Todd." Rory tried to beam but the idea of leaving her comfort zone to live with a boy was freaking her out.

"I told him that if purposed I'd say yes." Or more likely it was that.

"Wow, that's a lot to process all at once."

"Did I make a mistake? In saying yes, in telling him that?" Rory panicked and Lorelai felt like she knew her daughter again.

"I can't answer that. I like Todd, you know that. He's good for you. But aren't you a little young. I mean I just got married."

"How'd you know Luke was the one?" Rory asked she heard Lorelai sigh.

"Trouble in paradise? What kind of example of you?"

"Rory I really wanted to tell you this in person." Lorelai somberly spoke. Silence was heard.

"Well don't hold me in suspense." Rory broke the silence.

"Okay well Luke wants kids and I don't. I've already got you, I don't need more." Lorelai paused.

"Now normally this wouldn't be such a big deal except that he's really pushing, and you know I'm stubborn as hell. So you can imagine what we're both like now." Rory nodded. And it seemed like Lorelai paused just for that.

"So in my efforts to win I went to the doctor to get my tubes tied. Well they found cancer" A thud on the other end of the phone stopped Lorelai from talking.

"Rory? Rory?" She asked through the phone.

"You didn't tell me to sit down, I didn't have time to prepare myself for this. Are you okay?" Rory cried through the phone.

"Hon, it's not a big deal okay. I go in for treatment, they take my ovaries. It's no big deal sweetie. The worst it's doing is causing turmoil on my relationship with Luke." Lorelai comforted her daughter the best she could from twenty miles away. She was scared shitless but the doctor had explained that this was nothing to worry about especially since she didn't want to have kids.

"Oh. Did you tell him?" Rory sniffled through the phone. She got up from the ground and was looking for her car keys.

"Heh, well that's the problem, I didn't and then he found out. Hell broke loose and he's living in his old apartment." Lorelai whined.

"Oh well that sucks." She started her car.

"What was that? You're not coming here are you?" There was a crashing noise and as expected Lorelai panicked.

"I'll call you back."

Rory got out of car. She was fine, in fact she was still in the Yale parking lot. It was just a fender bender after all. She examined her car and found it to be fine, just scratched up. She looked at the beamer and groaned. It's front end was smashed in. The driver got out of the car and walked over to her obviously to yell. He took a deep breath then stopped when he noticed who had hit him.

"Rory." He said. She looked up at him and groaned again. Just what she wanted. To run into her ex boyfriend, literally.

"I'll pay for it." Rory up front offered. She didn't know how she could but she would.

"No, it was my fault." Logan stated. He didn't know why he took the fault. Maybe it was because she looked like she was crying. It seemed that every time he saw her she was crying.

"I wasn't looking, don't cover for me Logan." She wouldn't let him take the wrap for this. Maybe if he said he would pay for it she could leave and go see her mom.

"Is something wrong? You're crying." He stated. She rolled her teary eyes at his statement.

"Don't act like you care Logan."

"I'm not acting Ace. I still love you, I always will."

"No Logan. I'm not your ace. You don't love me, you love your money. You'll always love your money." She spat at him. She didn't have time for this bullshit.

"You still love me, I know you do or you wouldn't be acting so vehemently towards me." He reasoned. He hoped she'd say yes or anything to make him believe that he could still be with her.

"No, I love Todd." He looked down shocked at that statement even though almost two years had gone by.

"Look I have to go, just bill me the cost please." She made her way back to her car.

"Not so fast. I can't get where I need to go now. And I have to wait for a tow truck." He was trying to be charming.

"Call Frank." She yelled back to him referring to his limo driver.

"I think you take me where I need to go." He negotiated. He had no idea she was holding a royal flush.

"Look my mom has cancer I have to go." She turned around to look at him. He backed off. She got in her car and left. Logan called a tow truck. He still felt like he had a good hand. He wasn't going to bill her a dime. He was thinking about billing her a date or a coffee but he guessed that Todd wouldn't like that too much. Plus it seemed that Rory had enough on her plate. It they were destined to be then it was up to destiny to bring them together again.

When Rory pulled into the driveway she saw her mom run out of the house. She was pulled into an immediate hug when she got out of the car. Then what she didn't expect was a smack on the head.

"You tell mommy you're okay before hanging up." She lectured.

"I was worried about you." Rory defended.

Lorelai went in for treatment the day after graduation. Rory stayed with her while she was in the hospital. Luke eventually forgave Lorelai and was there as well. Todd got the apartment set up in New York and visited the Gilmore girls on the weekends. Everything seemed to be going great. Todd never responded to Rory's statement. Rory never brought it up again.

In the fall Lorelai was cured so to speak. She was let out of the hospital post-op and in remission. She complained lots about her loss of hair but once it started growing in she shut up. Luke told Rory that he expected grandkids so he could spoil them. It of course caused Rory to blush then to stumble over her words in panic. Todd walked into the room.

"What's going on?" He asked quietly since Lorelai was on the couch sleeping.

"I was telling Rory I want grandkids and soon." Luke repeated. Unbeknownst to them all Lorelai was awake, she was just resting her eyes.

"Oh well how's nine months from now." Todd let the cat out of the bag. Lorelai's eyes popped open. Rory left the room muttering about how now was not the time. Luke smiled.

After a stressful dinner all that was needed to know about Rory's pregnancy was answered. Lorelai kept wanting details of the actual conception which caused everyone to make disgusted faces.

"Okay so we'll visit in a few months when Lorelai is strong enough." Luke spoke for him and his wife. Lorelai was actually sitting outside on the patio swing with Rory who was falling asleep.

"Do you remember when you were little and we just got this house and you and I would sit out here in sleeping bags and look at the stars and talk about our future?" She felt Rory nod into her chest.

"Did we ever think it'd be like this?"

"No, we had dreams mom." Rory paused to gather her thoughts.

"We had hopes, we had aspirations but they were never real." Rory paused again and yawned.

"You told me once that life cannot be planned out, it's easier to fantasize about doing the ommpa loompas. Now that think about it, you were kind of drunk." Rory laughed. Lorelai laughed as well.

"Baby, you're all grown up."

"If it's any consolation I wish I was still little and living with you. Things were such much easier." Lorelai pulled Rory into a side hug.

"Aw. You're so good to mommy."

"I don't want to be a mommy." Rory's voice cracked.

"You're scared. That's normal. In a few months you'll be glowing." Rory kissed her mom on the cheek. The door opened and the boys walked out. Todd held out his hand to Rory. When she took it and stood up Luke took her spot by her mother.

"In a while that'll be us." Todd whispered in her ear. She suddenly felt like if he asked her to marry her she'd say no.

Everything went as planned. Lorelai got stronger. Rory got more excited. She and Todd were having a boy. They had the name all picked out and everything, Lucas Melvin Dunmark. Melvin was named after Todd's mother, it was the best they could come up with. And Lucas was obviously after the diner owner in Stars Hollow.

"I'm so excited to see mom." Rory was standing by their sound system trying to pick out a CD to put on. Todd was chopping onions in the kitchen.

"You talk to her everyday." He told her with a bit of a snap to his tone. Rory pushed it off thinking he had a hard day at work.

"You know we could have ordered pizza."

"No we couldn't. Every time we go there Luke makes us a gourmet meal. We can't order in when they visit. Haven't you the Miss Manners handbook yet, you read everything else." He full on snapped at her. She furled her eyebrows in anger. She was hormonal and nauseous all the time and he was giving her shit.

"I'm sorry did I deserve that?" She yelled back at him.

Todd sighed. He put the knife down and walked over to her. He pulled her into a hug.

"I'm a jackass today okay. Donald got promoted over me. Now Donald's been there longer but I work harder then the lazy bum. It didn't seem fair I guess. I'm sorry. I was uncalled for and here I am making up excuses." He walked back to the kitchen and continued making dinner.

"Did you know I was going to purpose tonight?" He hollered from the kitchen. She smiled but didn't say anything. She didn't want to get married because she was pregnant.

"And to think you were just supposed to be a one night stand." She joked while putting a CD in the player.

Something in Todd snapped. He came charging towards her with the knife raised in the air. Rory, frightened, started to put distance between her and the crazy man carrying a knife. She started stepping backwards. She tripped over the glass table and fell through it right when the knife was making contact to the skin under her right eye. This caused the knife to move downward and barely miss the actual eye.

Todd straddled her. Rory moved her body in all directions, anything to get him off her and away from her. She turned right and seconds later she felt the knife pierce her skin and delve deeper into her side. She screamed out in pain. She screamed out in fear.

Todd pulled the knife out of her quickly causing her to scream again. Nothing seemed to phase him. Rory fell on her back and grimaced in pain she moved her hand to the wound on instinct and Todd plunged the knife into her left fore arm. She recoiled in pain. She continued screaming, praying for someone to hear her. Todd stabbed her in her slightly swollen belly. The thought of losing her baby entered her mind. She couldn't do anything though.

She started kicking him realizing that she hadn't tried this before. Todd turned his body and the knife made contact with her right thigh. Rory was ready to give up when the door was kicked open. She swore Luke was wearing a red cape.

Luke ran up to Todd and kicked him in the face. Lorelai ran over to her daughter and just broke down in hysterical sobs.

"Put pressure on her wound!" Luke yelled over to Lorelai. He punched Todd in the jaw. Lorelai looked down at her now unconscious daughter and could only see several holes pouring out blood.

"Which one?" Lorelai cried out. Luke elbowed the jackass in the nose and kicked him in the groin upon hearing that. Once Todd fell unconscious Luke hurried over to Rory and took control.

"Call 911." He ordered his distraught wife. She hurried over to the phone and dialed the three numbers that could hopefully save her daughters life. She answered as many of the questions as she could to the paramedics on the phone but she didn't know much.

By the time the police and EMT's came Luke was covered in blood. It was safe to say Lorelai was hysterical. She wanted to beat up Todd as well but he was on his way to jail. Lorelai walked over to Luke, he welcomed her into a bloody hug.

"I um thought you didn't like blood." She stated to Luke.

"I don't, but Rory needed me." Lorelai nodded her head. Luke would have made a fantastic father.

"I'm going to ride with Rory." She stepped into the ambulance. Luke nodded his head. He got into his truck and cried.

there was some Rory/Logan in it. Hope you enjoyed it. And hey thanks for all the reviews, it lets me know if i should continue or not.


	4. Story Teller Extraordinaire

Chapter Three: Story Teller Extraordinaire

"Hey, so six thirty don't be late." Twenty six year old Casey Jones told her friend over the phone. She was hosting a dinner party for all her friends. She just had to constantly remind them of when because they were all flaky.

"Yeah, yeah I got it Case."

"I'll string you up by your toes if you're a minute late." Casey threatened through the phone. The person laughed.

"Don't think I won't do it Logan." She warned him. He just laughed again.

"I'll be there at six twenty." He bargained to Casey. He was rewarded with her laughter.

Logan had met Casey at a bar spring semester of his junior year at Yale. They had dated exclusively for a few months. He had wanted to replicate what he had with Rory. But he soon found out that Rory was irreplaceable. When he had broken it off with Casey he expected an explosion, he expected her to fight for him. But instead she just laughed and said she was wondering when he'd do it. He was so confused. The next day at the breakfast table Casey had just sat down next to him and started eating.

Casey told him that just because they weren't a couple it didn't mean that she was going to turn her back on the friends she had met. And so Casey was absorbed into the group. She fit after all. She was well bred and came from good money. She liked living life a little on the wild side, so she was inducted into the LDB for their senior year at school.

After graduation Casey had left for an advertising company in New York City. She had lost contact with the guys and Stephanie. She had met Steve and after a couple of months he showed classic abuse signs. She was in love so she ignored it the best she could. The first time he hit her was the last. She had called the cops and had Steve arrested. He hung himself in the cell that night. Her nightmare was far from over though. She couldn't sleep. She didn't want to eat. She blamed herself. She tore apart her life trying to figure out what she had done to make him hit her.

One night she had called Logan asking him for one night of passion and love. He had laughed it off thinking she was drunk. She had told him everything that night and Logan called up Finn, Colin and Stephanie to help him comfort her. Logan and Stephanie had pushed her into group therapy where she eventually got over it and realized Steve was just an abusive ass hole who hated life. Being bitter was better than nothing.

"Hey earth to Case?" Her roommate asked waving her hand in front of Casey face. Casey snapped out of it.

"Hey! Sorry I was just zoning off, thinking of Steve you know." Her roommate nodded her head.

"I know that feeling."

"Do you ever think about Todd?" Casey asked curious to see if her roommate was going to go back to him. It seemed that her roommate as well asfriend had been in contact with the man who gave her scars. Some scars couldn't be seen. Some scars were beneath the surface and settled in the emotional layers.

"I guess. I try not to." The young woman paused. "So I have a date tonight and hopefully if all goes well I won't be home tonight."

"You horny bitch!" Both girls laughed.

"Is tonight the night that your college buds are coming over?" Casey nodded her head.

"Uh huh. So uh, what college did you go to?" There was so much that Casey didn't know about her roommate. She knew about the traumatizing and emotional event that happened a few years ago but she didn't know anything that happened before.

"I didn't go."

"Rory, I know your lying." Casey accused. Rory just smiled.

"You'll never know then." Rory looked at the analogue clock hanging above the door. "Got to go. Group." Rory walked down the corridor of the large apartment to her room and grabbed her coat and purse.

"You going on the date afterwards or coming home to change." Rory was dressed in short jean shorts and a light blue V-neck tank top which accentuated her bosom. The shirt drew unsuspecting eyes to her breasts.

"I thought you might want to meet my friends. You'll probably call them rich bastards, or something else…" Casey trailed off, her eyes starring at Rory's cleavage.

"You really want to get laid, don't you?" Casey tore her eyes away from Rory. Rory just smirked.

" 'Cause if you don't leave now, I'll fuck you." The roommates laughed together.

Rory walked over to the door swinging her hips back and forth in a very obvious hooker manner. She grabbed her keys off the hook and put her hand on the door knob when Casey called out to her to stop.

"Hey what should I make for dinner?" It was a well known fact between the two of them that Rory was the cook in the building. And that is truly saying something.

"Order pizza and save me some." Rory answered before exiting their cozy abode.

Casey sighed and picked up the phone dialing the familiar number to Donnie's Home Style Pizza Bistro.

"Hey Don." Her and Rory were good friends of Donnie. Every Tuesday he would come by with their usual pizza and cherry coke and watch movies with them. Of course their wasn't so much watching going on since Rory mocked the movies so much that they couldn't hear the actual dialogue.

"I'm having a dinner party and Ror left." She paused. "Yeah uh three guys and two gals… Yes I am one of them. Hush…. Thanks Don, that'd be perfect. 6:30ish okay? Thanks." She hung up the phone and looked around her place. It was a disaster. She had some cleaning to do and then she had to change into her black cocktail dress.

The buzzer rang and Casey ran out of her room half naked. She quickly buzzed them up and then proceeded to pull her dress on. She had just slipped her black sandal heels on when she heard the knock on her door. She flung it open and upon seeing who was at the door looked up at the clock.

"You're late. It's six twenty two." She raised her eyebrow at him. He, defeated, nodded. Moments later the rest of the gang showed up all in their appropriate cocktail wear.

"So Mademoiselle what are we feasting on?" Finn asked in a snooty French accent. A bad snooty French accent.

"Pizza, It'll be here in a moment." And as if on cue the buzzer rang and Casey let Donnie up.

"Pizza? You mean I dressed up in this cute little outfit and these excruciating heels for Pizza?" Stephanie yelled. She did not like this one bit.

"My roommate left for the night, and she's the cook. It was last minute. Besides, aren't you surprised this way." Casey responded while paying the delivery boy. As he left she checked out his ass. Stephanie leaned towards the door to get a good look as well.

"As a perk you get a good glimpse at the most perfect ass known to man." Finn added.

"Plus I'm also suffering here." Casey handed the pizza boxes to Logan who was having problems controlling his laughter. Casey then pointed towards her high heel shoes. Stephanie sighed then took her shoes off to alleviate the pain. Casey shook her head and laughed before doing the same.

Finn attempted to take his shoes off but Stephanie stopped him by throwing her purse at him. He caught it and acted hurt that she would actually try to cause him pain. While Finn was distracting the girls Colin took his shoes and socks off then walked over to the table and sat down. Logan followed his lead.

"You'll stink up the apartment Finn. Shoes stay on." Casey ordered.

"But Colin and Logan took them off." He pleaded his case and finished with a puppy dog look. Casey and Stephanie looked towards the two men in question and shot them a pointed looked. They feigned innocence using their puppy dog looks. The girls just rolled their eyes.

"My roommate does it so much better than you guys." Casey remarked while rolling her eyes. She gave up the battle and sat down at the table. She opened the first box of pizza and grabbed three large slices. Stephanie joined the table. The boys looked shocked at how much pizza Casey was going to eat.

"What?" Casey asked, annoyed, with her mouth full of pizza.

"My roommate taught me how to eat. You'll have to meet her." Casey bit into her pizza.

"Okay, when?" Logan agreed. He was in a bit of a dry spell and new people were the easiest to seduce.

"I don't know, she's on a date." She answered. She looked at Logan suspiciously.

"No. You are not sleeping with my roommate." She put her foot down. She didn't mind sharing friends with him and all, it was just that every time a friend of hers has sex with Logan they, well, stop being her friend.

"Yeah, you ruin women." Finn chimed in. Stephanie and Colin nodded.

"Like who?"

"Your precious Ace." Colin spat viciously at Logan. The blonde tightened his jaw and looked down. He missed her so much. Everyone he dated couldn't compare.

"Yeah. Tell me about my predecessor." Casey laughed. She was curious to who this 'Ace' was because she had changed Logan for the better and then he broke her heart. She was familiar with the for love or money ultimatum that Mitchum gave Logan. She was also familiar with Logan's choice.

"One hell of a 'Sophie's Choice' reenactment there Logan." Finn joked. He was uncomfortable with the silence that followed Casey's order.

"Oh go to hell, all of you." Logan snapped. It didn't matter how many times he said he regretted his choice, they still made him out as the bad guy in all of this.

Stephanie opened her mouth to say something when the door to the apartment flew open. And there stood the lovely Ace who was barefoot and purse less.

"Hey, date didn't go well?" Casey casually asked not knowing that her roommate and good friend was the infamous Ace.

"Oh yeah. Bruce and I were walking to the Ice cream shop when some random guy asks for my purse and shoes." She paused to catch her breath.

"And so I tell the guy that all that's in my purse is two dollars and a handful of change, expired credit cards, three sticks of gum and my broken cell phone. Then the guys pulls out his gun and Bruce flees like a, like a flea. And so I tell the guy to kill me 'cause I don't care. And then he starts sweating and gets nervous because he doesn't want to kill me and I'm not scared. So he just grabs my purse and looks at the contents, and when he found out I was right he threw it in an alley way and leaves." She takes a deep breath and walks into the kitchen to grab some pizza. She is oblivious to the guests.

"Now while I am searching for my pitiful bag, I break a heel and figure I should just throw them away. So I am walking barefoot down the street when I realize I forgot to find my bag. But it was too late to turn back cause I was just a block away and I still needed to find a way in. Luckily I caught Mrs. Mininski and she let me in. And so you have it. My failed attempt to get laid." She finished and took a bite of the pizza while walking over to the couch. She plopped into it and turned the TV on.

"Oh hi." She stated after the fact to Casey's guests. She didn't turn around to acknowledge them because she knew exactly who they were. She had snuck a peek while walking into the kitchen. She was horrified to discover that the three handsome men were Logan, Colin and Finn. If she was desperate and they were offering she'd sleep with Finn.

"Wow. So basically you gave the guy your purse and shoes, no questions asked." Casey clarified. It was highly amusing when Rory went off into story mode. She could tell that Rory was a writer or could be a writer. She didn't actually know what Rory did for a living.

"Basically. But let's not forget that Bruce ran away like a scared little girl, I looked death in the eye again and Mrs. Mininski was wearing her halo tonight and not her usual devil horns." Casey laughed. Even when you chopped Rory's story up and left with her with nothing but facts it was still entertaining.

"You're a writer aren't you?" Casey guessed. The others looked at Casey like she was crazy for having to guess. But then again, this was clearly not the Rory they knew.

"What makes you think that?" Rory was in no mood to answer questions or to give clues. Her life was personal.

"Oh come on, it's that story telling ability you have. Dead give away."

"I got that from Lorelai." Rory winced for two reasons. The first one for having to call her mother by her first name and second because she leaked some information to Casey. She wasn't sure which one she hated the most.

"Oh, who's that? You know what never mind. Let me introduce you to my friends." With that Casey dragged Rory off the couch and into the dinning area.

"The blondes are Stephanie and Logan." Casey pointed to the two of them. Rory made no sign of recognition.

"The Australian is Finn, watch him, he'll try to seduce you and then use you." Casey was rewarded by Finn shouting out a 'hey'.

"And then that just leaves Colin." Casey pointed to Colin. She looked at her roommate who was avoiding eye contact with them all and then her friends were staring at her.

"And this is Rory, my roommate." After a pause and a noticeable increase in the tension Casey broke the silence.

"Don't be rude everyone, say hi."

"I'm going to my room." Rory stated then started for the hall. Logan reached out his hand and grabbed her arm. She turned around with so force and such animosity that he let go to stop the chair from falling backwards.

"Stay Ace." Logan offered her. She just walked away disappearing down the vacant hall. He remembered a night so many years ago when she left him at the bleachers and he thought he'd never see her again. He remembered the feeling that came afterwards, total despair. He had felt so lost without her, he felt incomplete without her. And now, suddenly seeing her he felt like he had a second chance with her until she walked away and that feeling of despair took over once more. Was that all they had left, a few memories that always left them hurting? Always left them aching for more?

A/N: Thank you for all the reviews. I'm sorry about my typos in the last chapter, but i am only human. Also I am sorry that a lot of you thought that it was confusing and rushed, It was meant to be rushed. It's no fun to write something you don't want to write about, like the whole relationship with Todd. Also I thought i was clear about the time differnce but I guess i wasn't, I apologize. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, sorry it took so long, but i had some writers block.


	5. Devious Frog Tricks

A/N and Disclaimer: Don't own GG. Thank you all for your wonderful reviews. Sorry it took so long to update but I was on vacation. And hey if anybody wants to see something happen, let me know maybe I can work it in. And don't give me the get Rory and Logan together line. That is going to happen, I assure you it will. But yeah, I've basically got this story planned out but if there are any small plots you want me to explore give me the heads up. Oh and send you're questions, so I make sure that I answer them all.

So if you actually read what's above then you can now enjoy the chapter. Oh and I know there are some greedy bastards out there who just skipped to the story, I'm watching you. Enjoy!

**Chapter Four: How the Princess Fell for the Frog's Devious Tricks**

Casey looked at the empty hallway then at her friends. She didn't know what to do. She could go after Rory and make sure everything was okay or she could scream at Logan for how he treated Rory in the past. She chose the first option, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to yell at Logan later.

She opened the door to her roommate's room and spotted the brunette on her bed staring at the ceiling. Casey walked in and slowly closed the door. She didn't want Logan to come in. She plopped down on the bed next to Rory.

"So? You're the infamous Ace." Casey started. She felt like an idiot for stating the obvious but she didn't know what else to say. Rory turned her head and looked at Casey but didn't say anything. Casey now had a foot hole in her past and Rory liked to keep her past in the distant past. Besides it was nobody's business but her own and of course those directly involved.

"You did go to college. You went to Yale." Casey silently cursed herself for being so moronic around one of her closest friends.

"Logan, he's well a jackass for what he did to you." Rory looked at her and snarled. She hated pity, the reason she ran away from her past was because of all the pity and sympathy cards people were sending her. She didn't want the pity parade on her past relationship with Logan too.

"Everything happens for a reason, Case. Logan broke up with me, you met Logan, I met Todd. Then I met you." Rory told her friend. She got up from the bed and went into her closet. She pulled out a cute black leather mini skirt and an olive green halter top.

"Please just leave me alone, okay? I prefer to keep my past…"

"in the past." Casey finished for her. Rory nodded her head and took off her shirt.

Casey glanced at Rory and her eyes automatically fell to the large scar on the left side of her abdomen. Casey had seen that particular scar many times before and every time she couldn't help but feel the pain that it caused Rory. Sure, Casey was in an abusive relationship but he never tried to kill her. She always wondered what Rory had felt then, how she had gotten over it. And then she remembered that Rory never did get over it. And then she remembered the first time she saw Rory.

_Casey was just walking into the community center which hosted the group therapy for domestic abuse victims when she bumped into a woman. This particular brunette woman had a scar right under her right eye. She was holding a knitting bag and Casey automatically thought that she was in the wrong place. _

_"Knitting class is in the other building." Was her snooty remark. She watched as the woman pointed to her scar under her eye._

_"You don't get that from a knitting needle." The woman paused. _

_"A crochet hook maybe?" The woman finished then started on her way into the classroom._

_"Oh, I'm sorry. Did he, was he wearing a ring?" Casey asked as she too walked into the classroom._

_"Oh yeah. If you count a nine inch cooking knife as a ring? Then yes, he was wearing a ring." The woman joked and Casey felt obligated to laugh. _

_Casey took a seat down in the chair next to the funny lady. She felt that she should give her the basic run down of the meeting. To Casey the woman didn't look like she had ever been in one of these. She leaned in to tell the blue eyed brunette when the ring leader entered the room. _

_Mrs. Pallo looked around the circle of chairs and her eyes fell on the woman sitting next to Casey Jones. She looked down at her seating chart and picked up her pencil._

_"And you are?" Mrs. Pallo asked her. The woman stood up and Casey half expected her to make a humorous comment. _

_"Rory." Casey looked at her. She had thought that name was reserved for old retired men. So she laughed thinking it was meant to be funny. But Rory snapped around to look at her and shot her a pretty evil look._

_"Something wrong with my name?" Rory resisted the urge to yell. Casey shook her head. This woman was intimidating. And that was saying a lot considering Casey grew up in the Manhattan elite. She was used to intimidating woman._

_Halfway through the meeting Rory started to talk. Actually she started to yell which, to those who had been there awhile knew, was just to stop herself from crying._

_"When do you get better? I mean when do you come to terms with the fact that someone tried to kill you? 'Cause I've been wandering in and out of these meetings all over the east coast for two years and I still feel like crap. Well not crap, just I don't know how I feel." Her voice started to crack and her ocean blue orbs filled up with tears, her eyes glistening. She was looking up at the ceiling willing her tears to be absorbed back into her eyes._

_"Sometimes I just want to go back to Todd and have him finish me off, 'cause I'm already dead. And other times I just want to go back to feel loved 'cause nobody wants to love a battered woman. They're all afraid that if they yell or raise their hands in any way that I'll freak and call the cops." Her tears broke through and she was looking at the ground so nobody could see her at her weakest moment. Her voice was shaking and it took all her energy to speak through her vulnerability. _

_"I just, when do you feel better? Like you can live again?" Rory finished. _

_She just couldn't speak anymore. She just stood there in the center of the circle crying into her hands. Casey stood up and put her arms around the once forthcoming, intimidating woman. She led the fragile girl back to her chair and just rubbed her back hoping it would soothe her. Whatever talk that continued for the next hour was lost on Rory. _

_Casey sat with Rory well after the end of the meeting. She tried to recall what Mrs. Pallo had said in response to her outburst. Time. How many times could this girl hear that time would solve everything. _

_"There's no quick fix, Rory." Casey had told her as they were leaving the building._

_"I'm beginning to think there isn't a fix at all." And with that Rory walked away from Casey. Casey didn't expect to see her at her apartment the next morning applying to be her roommate._

"Where are you going, now?" Casey asked Rory as she put her shirt on.

"Well, I still haven't gotten laid, and it's beginning to be a problem." She raised her hands in emphasis of exactly how big the problem was.

"I mean how many times can you satisfy yourself until it doesn't work anymore?" Rory asked as she changed into the black mini.

"Did you ever sleep with Finn? No, never mind that was inappropriate" Casey couldn't help but smile as she shook her head.

"Do you think I could woo him into my bed tonight?" Rory turned to her vanity mirror and started to put on some eyeliner.

"Rory, let's talk." Casey stated in a serious tone. Rory turned around sharply to look at her with her eyes brimming with tears.

"You're not breaking up with me, are you? 'Cause I don't think I can handle it." Rory sucked in her breath and looked up to keep the tears from falling. Casey shook her head violently as she tried to hold in her laughter.

"What and give up a sweet ass like that? Never!" Casey joked then burst into laughter. Soon afterwards Rory started laughing too before joining Casey on the bed.

"No seriously let's talk." Casey heard Rory sigh and look down at her hands.

Rory traced the tiny scars on her hands with her fingers. It became a numbing mechanism to just trace them gently, counting them and recalling how exactly she got them. Trying to figure out which shard of glass caused the tiny imperfection on her delicate hands.

In the beginning it was only a nervous habit, something to do while she was bored. She never meant for it to become the key to shutting out the world, to separate herself from reality. But there were a lot of things that Rory had never meant to happen. The biggest being that she never meant to fall into an abusive relationship.

She looked down at her hands while Casey spoke. Rory gave the appropriate responses, she nodded and 'uh huh'-ed. But Rory Gilmore didn't have a clue as to what Casey was saying.

Casey looked over at her roommate after Rory had agreed to being raised by wolves. She noticed that Rory was looking down at her hands, a classic sign that she wasn't paying attention and Casey scolded herself for not noticing before starting her 'you can't run from the past' speech. Casey grabbed Rory's hand and held it tightly in her fist causing Rory to look up at her shocked.

"What'd you do that for?" Rory shouted, or maybe it just sounded like she was shouting because it was so quiet, too quiet. Casey got up and tip toed over to the door. Rory, who had caught on to what Casey was doing started to talk bullshit. Casey held up three fingers and mouthed the numbers as she counted backwards. When all fingers were down Casey roughly opened the door and Finn and a glass came crashing down to the floor. Not far from Finn was the lovely Stephanie and boring Colin eavesdropping.

To the intruding trio it looked as if Rory wasn't phased by their childish antics. To Casey, Rory was fuming. But Rory was neither pissed nor un-phased by the act. She had spent a year of her life with these people and expected them to be listening outside her door, and she was relieved that Logan wasn't also invading her privacy. Yes, that's right, Rory still harbors feelings for one Logan Huntzberger.

"Hey!" Finn shouted as he hit the floor, the glass falling from his hand and shattering a few feet away from his head. Rory jumped at the noise and the memory of crashing through a glass table.

Casey turned her head away from the guilty party and looked at a frightened Rory. It was obvious to everyone in the room that Rory was scared but Casey was the only one who knew that she was reliving her abusive past. Casey found it odd that she knew Rory's most inner secrets and scars (as Rory referred to them) but not any of the basics.

Rory, after regaining her composure left her room. Casey let her go knowing it would do no good to try and stop her. On her way out of the apartment she bumped into Logan who was pacing the front door obviously trying to decide whether to leave or stay and try to talk to Rory.

"Oh sorry." They both said in sync.

"Rory, do you want to talk?" He asked noting her shaken composure and foggy eyes.

"Yeah, but not to you." Rory went into the kitchen and grabbed a slice of cold pizza.

"Oh, okay. I um, I know you're on your way out, but um, I'd like to talk to you. Could I maybe wait 'til you get back, if you get back to talk." She passed him to get to the door and nodded her head. It was always cute when Logan Huntzberger was unsure of himself.

_"Hey, I'm watching Willy Wonka, want to join me?" Casey had asked her new roommate. Her not so financially stable roommate but one that she could form a support system with._

_"Uh, no. Memories." Rory had remarked. _

_She hadn't quite warmed up to this roommate yet. She had only lived with three people her entire life, her mother, Paris and Todd. Her mother was everything to her, her life giver, her comfort, her hero, idol, friend, and so on. She didn't just live with her mother out of necessity but out of love. And Paris was quite possibly the best roommate ever. Sure, she was intense and sometimes a pain in the ass, but it was painfully obvious who she was. She was goal driven and a little crazy but she always had a solution to a problem, she would always try to help in her own unique way, and more importantly she was a friend. And the Todd experience explains exactly why she is so apprehensive about moving in with a new roommate. _

_"Bad ones?" Casey had turned her body a little on the couch so that she was now watching Rory cook dinner._

_"No. I mean I guess. You know, scars." Was all Rory said as she continued chopping the onions for the stew._

_"Huh? How are memories, bad ones, scars." Casey was confused._

_"They're the ones you can't see and can't feel but hurt so much more." Rory paused._

_"Most of my life was filled with good memories, but after a while, after Todd, I went numb to it all. Everything I viewed as good was somehow construed into bad. And I can't really explain it, but it's like I had all these people, after Todd, who've known me forever and they just used my memories to make me forget, to make me smile, to make me feel better and so on." She paused again while throwing the onions into the pot. She started on the carrots. _

_"And I guess I resented them, the memories, because it hurt, because I couldn't understand how a life so good fell into abuse. So I try to forget them, you know, you can see what Todd did, I've told you, I've told a room a strangers what he did. And yes, you give me sympathy, but it doesn't have strings attached. You didn't know who I was before, so you can't add that extra special look of misunderstanding. How the princess fell for the frog's devious tricks." She threw the carrots into the pot as well and started to clean off the cutting bored. She checked on the stew before sitting down at the kitchen table._

_"I don't understand."_

_"Neither do I. But you know how they say that emotions build up and eventually burst. I feel like the opposite. I feel like my memories are the ones that will destroy me, because they hurt so much. Because I can't look back on the past and not want it back. It's the pain beneath the surface. You can't see it, but it's there." Rory paused thinking back on what all she said._

_"And scars are really just memories that hurt." Rory looked at Casey and brushed away her tears._

_"Look Casey, You won't understand what I'm about to say, and I'm not insulting your intelligence or anything, it's just others before you haven't. I don't talk about my past, before Todd. Everything behind that is blank to you. I like my past in the past for all the reasons I've stated before. Everything you'll know about me is from Todd up, and not a whole lot of it. Pretend I'm an amnesia victim from a few years back, all I have is waking up in the hospital." Rory returned to her stew and stirred it a little, knowing that she had probably ruined it._

_"I understand Rory." Casey lied. She only half understood, and she didn't like what she heard._

_"Do you? Doesn't the past make us who we are? I mean surely you've heard of people running from their past but erasing it?" _

_"What I understand Rory is that you're just a frightened little girl who doesn't want anyone to get close to her. I think you're philosophy is ass backwards. Yes Rory, the past is who you are. You're just too tired to run from it." Casey paused, her tone was venomous and cold. She didn't want a distant roommate, she wanted someone who understood what she had gone through and could help her through it if need be, she wanted a friend not a shell of a woman who had been destroyed by an evil man._

_"I'm watching the movie, hope it doesn't hurt you too much." Casey turned back to the screen and pressed the play button on the remote. _

Rory sat down in the chair across from him. She sighed and brought her hands to her face. She didn't know why she was talking him. When she removed her hands she looked at him.

"I hate you." And then after a second adds. "Which isn't really true because I'm still in love with you."


	6. In Love with a Ghost

A/N: Don't own G.G. Thank you all for the reviews. Enjoy!

Chapter Five: In Love with a Ghost

He looked at her, puzzled. Why she could still love him was a mystery to him. He had hurt her. Her had sent her into a deep depression. He had been the cause of all her troubles at one time or another. But the very fact that she could still love him after all they went through only reminded him of why she was too good for him, that she deserved better.

"You deserve better, Rory." She looked at him and laughed.

"I can't do better than you." She answered, still shaking with laughter. He remembered why he fell in love with her in the first place.

"I still love you too. But." She cut him off by pounding her fists against the wall. He looked up sharply, watching as anger danced across her eyes like a movie.

"You took everything away from me. You took my family, you took my home, you took everything I ever had and I didn't have much to begin with." He could only watch as she fought her inner demons that he knew he had caused. He looked on as she buried her face in her hands. He stared at her tear streaked, broken face, fixating on the scar under her eye.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He cried too. She wanted to laugh at him. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to take his hands into hers and tell him everything was going to be alright. She didn't know what she wanted to do.

"I don't think." She paused trying to regain her thoughts, trying to find the best way to say it without hurting him. "I'll ever be able to forgive you for what you've done." He only nodded.

They stared at each other for another fifteen minutes or so before either of them dared to say anymore. They had loved each other not too long ago. It was hard to let go of those emotions. It was hard to just forget all the good times, all the smiles and all the laughs they had in the relationship. So when he finally spoke he expected her to be honest and open with him. She had no intentions of deceiving him.

"Can I ask…" She beat him to the ball.

"What happened to the baby?" She waited for him to confirm his curiosity. He nodded. She took a long deep breath, trying to stall for time, trying to find the best way to answer his question.

"Did I? I mean, when I? Did you?" He stuttered out. She looked at him and burst out into a cynical laugh.

"Did you kill the baby? No, you don't deserve that credit Todd." She turned on her heels and left the visiting area. Todd pounded his fists against the transparent screen that separated him from her. He looked down at his fists, the cuffs, and cried.

_Rory walked into the nursery, it was 3:05 in the morning. Five minutes past her son's normal feeding time. As much as she appreciated the extra few minutes to sleep, her maternal instincts kicked in and told her something wasn't right. She had turned over on her side and grabbed the baby monitor. She couldn't hear anything. She had naturally assumed that the batteries weren't working. Still she got out of bed and walked through her little apartment in Florida to the nursery._

_"Benny, Mommy's here." She cooed to her silent baby. _

_"Yeah, I'm tired too." She joked as she looked down at her sleeping son._

_"I know I shouldn't…" She whispered referring to picking him up, knowing what would come if she woke a sleeping baby. But she didn't care. He was her family, he was all of her family._

_When she picked him up he didn't wake up crying. He didn't wake up at all. She bounced him a little trying to jolt him awake even though in the back of her mind she knew he wouldn't wake up at all. Her shaking started to become more frantic and urgent as the thought was brought forward. She laid her precious boy down in his crib. She held back all her tears as she felt for a pulse. _

_She collapsed into a heap on the floor. She screamed out in agony as the one man, who she had sworn would be the last, left her. She let the tears flow down her face. She held nothing back. She cried and screamed and yelled and pounded her fists into the hardwood floor until they bled. _

_Her neighbor had called the cops, thinking something was wrong. They broke open the door, she couldn't hear the pounding through all her screaming. One cop picked her up and dragged her out of the room, stopping her from continually hurting herself. The other surveyed the scene and called over the coroner. _

_Hours later Rory was sitting down in an uncomfortable chair listening to the man in the white coat tell her the cause of her son's death. But she was an intelligent woman, she already knew what had claimed his life, SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome. She barely heard a word the man was saying. She just wanted to go to sleep and wake up having it all be some disturbing dream._

Casey Jones waited up all night for her roommate to come home. She waited with Logan for quite some time before sending him home. She hadn't the heart to yell at him after he declared that he was still in love with Ace. She hadn't the heart to tell him Ace didn't exist anymore. She hadn't the heart to tell him that Rory had vowed to never love another man after Todd.

She woke up on the couch at four in the morning. She had an important meeting to go to in the morning. Working on a Saturday was killer. She walked over to her room, peeking into Rory's and after seeing it was empty she figured that Rory had finally gotten laid. She plopped onto her bed and turned her alarm on. She'd talk to Rory in the morning.

When she woke up Rory was nowhere to be seen. There was no note or message or anything. But to Casey's relief everything was just as it was left, meaning that Rory had not packed up and left, something that Casey worried about all the time.

After getting dressed and heating up some cold pizza, she left for work. She had an office meeting then a business lunch with a hotel owner who wanted to get word out about her establishment during the slow winter months. The office meeting was horrible. Somebody got fired for losing a multimillion dollar account, Casey thanked god that she still handled small businesses under her own firm, which was under the bigger firm. The things you got for being the daughter of the CEO.

She walked into the restaurant talking on her cell phone to Rory.

"Where were you last night?" She asked for about the billionth time, but Rory was avoiding the question.

"Did you know that the Yankee's won last night?" Rory answered.

"That's impossible, they didn't play. You do realize you are talking to their number one fan."

"I didn't know that. Why didn't you tell me?" The journalist in Rory took over and Casey felt a deep sense of satisfaction that she now knew why her roommate was so inquisitive.

"You are such a journalist." When Rory didn't say anything, she assumed she was right.

"You are, aren't you?" Casey was boasting and making no efforts to conceal it.

"Don't assume Casey, it just makes an ass out of you and me." Casey heard dial tone shortly after the statement. She groaned and threw her phone into her purse angrily.

"Boyfriend?" A female voice asked from across the table. Casey looked up and smiled sheepishly for not being more aware of the arrival of her client.

"No, just my roommate. She's so stubborn." She answered as it was only polite to do so.

"Casey Jones." She introduced herself and held out her hand.

"Lorelai Gilmore." Lorelai took the hand and shook it. Casey looked up at her eyes and for some reason they looked familiar but she couldn't place it.

"Your roommate must be a Gilmore, we're so stubborn. I still can't get my mother to stop setting me up with Christopher, even though I'm married. And my daughter, she won't talk to me at all, and I don't know what I did wrong. My father won't retire even though he's pushing seventy." Lorelai joked.

"You know what, her last name is Gilmore." She laughed and Lorelai soon joined in.

"Well it is a common name, enough about my evil secretive roommate, what do you plan to accomplish with the Dragonfly Inn?" Casey easily turned the conversation around into business talk.

Rory walked aimlessly down the New York streets. Well, not aimlessly, she was shopping. For what, she didn't know. It was a habit she forced herself into, shopping for the purpose of forgetting. It didn't work better than drinking but it was healthier. She turned the corner and walked into the record store, the one Jess had taken her to when she visited him. When she had decided to make New York City her permanent residence she had vowed to track down the little music store. When she had seen the closing sign on it the first day after she found it, she nearly died. She talked to the owner and tried to convince her to keep it open but the old woman simply told her it was a money hole. Rory had bought the place from the old woman that day, as is. She spent months revamping the place up and getting word out. She even talked the café owner next door to knocking down the wall that separated the two stores. She added a small library in the corner and since then the store had been buzzing with customers.

"Hey Rory." Her co-owner Amy greeted her as she entered through the café doors. Amy owned the café portion of the business. She had actually just graduated from NYU with a business degree and took over the little shop from her mother when they were in the midst of construction. She and Rory were instant friends.

Amy didn't have the same connection that Casey had with Rory but she understood the importance of secrets, she even had some of her own. She knew right from the first moment she met Rory that she was a secretive person so she never questioned it, she never asked personal questions. In other words she respected Rory's secrecy, something that Casey never did.

"Hey Amy." Rory greeted back. She walked behind the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee before walking the twenty or so feet to the record store portion of the store.

"Whatcha up to?" Amy asked even though she had her suspicions. Considering Rory was holding several shopping bags and looked kind of distracted it was easy to deduce that Rory was shopping through the pain.

"Oh not much, just thought I'd do a round of shopping before coming to work." Rory answered. She put the bags behind the counter.

"Oh, what made you change you're mind?" Rory had called earlier to cancel.

"I was feeling up to it. Plus, I just killed my gold card. All that shopping without any caffeine just tired the poor sucker out. So I figured I would partake in our Saturday ritual and get this baby" She pointed to her purse obviously referring to the credit card.

"some fuel." She finished and Amy burst out laughing.

For the most part Rory and Amy were silent partners. They didn't really do anything except for the initial investment, but on Saturdays they both worked. It was more of a hang out session though. They would put out a bowl of chips for the customers and with every book purchase the customer would get a free cup of coffee or half off on selected records. They would play the jute box extra loud so they had to scream to one another and play music videos that didn't relate to the song being played. It was a hip hangout for kids and adults alike.

"Hey, can we talk? Sometime in the near future?" Rory asked. Amy was the only person Rory ever confided in, and not much at that.

"Yeah, after work we can get some drinks." Amy turned around and served one of the customers.

"Is everything okay?" Amy shouted over the music which Rory just turned up higher in volume.

"Yeah." Nothing was ever okay in Rory land though. She was tired. She was tired of all the secrets, all the lies and denying who she really is. She's sick of silently hurting, silently missing her old life. It was time to come clean.

Rory chose to confide in Amy and not Casey because Casey would make a big deal out of it. Casey wouldn't think of it as a story like Amy would automatically think it was. Amy and Rory would sit at the bar, flirting with the cute underage, nineteen year old, bartender and make up stories about their past. Last week John, the bartender, thought that Rory had been raised by elephants because she has a good memory no matter how drunk she gets. Amy grew up in North Ireland with Patrick O'Donnell and had lots of babies. According to Amy, John was apparently Rory's long lost son.

That was another thing, Rory was tired of not being able to react. She couldn't burst into tears every time she sees a baby. She couldn't mock all the movies she had watched with her mother. If she couldn't be herself she couldn't live.

When Rory had first come to New York she had no intentions of staying. Even after buying the record store and making all the renovations she still had the possibility to leave. She didn't want to leave now, she had a home, she had friends. And although she would never let herself fall in love and start a family the arrangement she had was good enough for her.

She had never wanted to stay in one place so much. Even when she was living in Florida, she didn't want to be there. She had all the intentions of always living in the state for as long as she lived. But her heart longed for her to return to Stars Hollow. She resisted the urge as much as she could. When she needed help as a new mother she had turned to the eighty year old African American woman to help her. Kay had taught her all she needed to know about breast feeding, burping, the breast pump, etc.

She learned to look at Kay as a mother. So naturally when she decided to pick up and leave again it was almost as hard as when she left the first time, leaving behind her actual family. That was why she never got close to people, anymore. Because she would leave them and it would hurt too much since they had become a big influence on her life. Basically she was selfishly shielding herself from getting hurt.

_"Thanks you so much for everything you've done. You have no idea how much you've helped." Rory offered Kay her gratitude as a farewell. The old woman looked at the young woman she had come to think of as her granddaughter and smiled with sympathy._

_"I wish you didn't have to leave." Kay slowly told Rory. She was hoping to convince Rory to stay a little longer._

_"You know I do." Kay and Rory both knew that was a lie. Rory didn't have to do anything, she just wanted to leave._

_"But what would this little old bitty do without you?" Kay tried to guilt her into staying. She hated goodbyes._

_"I'll miss you so much." Rory chose to ignore that comment. She knew what Kay was up to and knew that the easiest goodbyes were the quick ones._

_"Ben and I have to go now." She stood up and left the building towards her car holding a ball of blankets close to her chest. Kay hadn't the heart to tell her that Ben was dead, had been for a couple of weeks._

Casey threw her keys onto the kitchen counter with Logan right behind her. He had been sitting outside the building for hours waiting for Rory to come home so he can talk to her.

"Thanks, you know for letting me in." Logan broke the silence. He had the sinking suspicion that Casey was mad at him.

"Anytime." He looked at him, studying his features.

She remembered how she had been attracted to his handsome looks but she fell in love with the man who was guilty of letting the love of his life walk away. Just by seeing him now, looking so lost and confused, reminded her of why her relationship with Logan failed. He was still in love with Ace when they met. And now, she could tell he was still in love with a ghost.

"What are you doing here, Logan?" She wasn't mad at him per say. She was mad at the fact that she only fell in love with love sick puppies and they weren't in love with her.

"I want to talk to Rory." He was so smug about it that it made Casey cringe. He didn't deserve Rory. Sighing, she realized that he was her friend too and he deserved to be happy. If he could convince Rory to go out with him, then he deserved to be happy with Rory and it wasn't her place to warn the two of them about the eventual heartbreak.

"She doesn't want to talk to you." Friends were honest with one another no matter how painful the truth can be.

"So how did you two meet?" He asked ignoring her venomous tone and dagger shooting eyes. He thought it was cute how protective Casey was of Rory.

"Um, in group therapy." She answered thinking he was buying time from the upcoming you-hurt-her-you-die speech.

"For domestic abuse?" He sounded surprised.

"Yeah, why?" She asked curious about his reaction.

"Nothing." She gave him a look and he conceded.

"She just doesn't seem the type, that's all." He shrugged his shoulders and leaned onto the back of the couch.

"Don't!" Casey roared at him.

"Don't make it seem like she chose this!" She screamed at him, angry at how naïve he was, like she would actually volunteer to be at the receiving end of an abusive relationship.

"Like I chose this." She added quietly after she contained her anger. She was left with nothing but self pity and the familiar feeling of failure. Suddenly and inadvertently Logan had destroyed the Berlin wall of recovery. She was right where she started.

A/N: Anybody want Logan and Casey to get together? Huh? No takers, I see.

Mcmiller- having problems fitting Finn and Colin in as big brothers as they aren't a big part of the story. You may have to wait awhile, I figure I'll wait to do that after Rory and Logan get together, if they ever do. And then it might be in a sequel of sorts, if I can bring myself to do one. But don't worry I'm not even close to done. Well at the moment I'm not done, I have no reserve chapters, it all lives inside my head. But I think I still have at least three more chapters. Well see. Anyway, would you be totally disappointed if I didn't fit that in?


	7. Home

It goes without saying that I do not own Gilmore Girls.

Chapter 6: HOME

Logan stood there in complete shock and sighed. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know if he should go after Casey and fix their friendship or follow his heart and wait for Rory to come home. He sighed again, checked his watch and then walked to Casey's room. He knocked on the door twice before opening it.

"Mind if I come in here and apologize for being such an asshole?" He asked her. She was sitting on the bed staring at him. He had the pleasure of watching her face turn from angry and unforgiving to sincere and accepting. He smirked his all knowing smirk and watched as she smiled.

"You better get out there, Huntz, it's Saturday she comes home at eleven." Casey remarked, she bent over the side of the bed and searched for something hiding underneath the massive amounts of blankets on the floor. He laughed, Casey never was a neat person.

"Is that so?" He inquired, ignoring the fact that Casey was nearly falling off the bed.

"Yep, but I don't know, lately she's been off routine." Casey replied. She searched under the bottom most blanket and yelped out in accomplishment as she found what she was looking for. She help up the book and heard Logan laugh. She loved his laugh.

"Logan there's something you need to know." She paused for his reaction to her eerily serious voice. He stepped towards the bed and sat down with a sigh. He didn't like where this was going.

"The Rory you're still in love with…"

"I never said I was still in love with her, I just miss her." He clarified, trying to save his balls. She smacked him.

"Please, Huntz, it's way too obvious that you still love her." She smacked him again as he opened his mouth in protest.

"Anyway the Rory, the Ace that you love doesn't exist anymore. She's a different person. Now I don't know what made her change, maybe it was Todd, I don't really know for sure." Logan nodded, he didn't know what else he could say.

"For the longest time I thought she was looking for relief in the wrong places. I mean when I first met her at group she was sharp, snappy, angry and then she broke down. I offered her a shoulder to cry on, and the next thing I know she's applying to be my roommate." She paused, Logan was immersed in her story, she wasn't used to having his complete attention.

"I don't know what happened to change her. I met her a year ago, two years after the Todd incident. Something could have happened in between then and now. I just don't know, I don't know her the way you used to. I only know the Rory that keeps quiet about her past." Casey finished then got up, she left the room and went straight to the kitchen. She pulled out some pizza and took a bite. Logan followed suit.

"So she's not over Todd?" Logan naively asked. Casey shot a sharp warning look at him.

"You don't get over being nearly killed in a couple of years. I haven't gotten over it."

"You weren't nearly killed Casey, he smacked you once. Two years later you should be over it."

"Logan! Abuse isn't something you get over." Casey screamed at him, she couldn't believe he was being such an asshole.

"Come on Casey, don't believe everything they feed you at Group. You don't cry about it, you don't think about it, you just go to that stupid meeting to meet people to help them, which is a great quality, Case. But stop pretending you're still torn up over it." Logan was calm and collected as he said this, he kept an eye on Casey's temper and the door.

"Get out, Logan." It was all Casey had said before opening the door for him. He stood defiantly watching her movement. He didn't come to start a fight with one of his closest friends, and he had ended up starting two.

"I can't leave. You know I can't. I'm waiting until Rory comes home, so we can talk and I can win her back. I'm sorry for upsetting you, but I seriously think you are over what happened, and I think it's about time you realized it too and moved on." He explained and apologized all in one breath. He made it clear to her that he wanted Rory back, which in his mind showed weakness and then he justified his previous words with friendship. Of course Casey saw right through it.

"I'm still in love with you, Logan." She told him, and quickly got rid of his cocky grin on his pretty boy face. Logan's jaw hung open with shock, he was speechless.

"You what?" Logan finally stuttered out. He really didn't want to deal with this right now. He hoped that this was all some sort of joke, something to get him to shut up and to leave.

"I still love you." She repeated.

"No. You can't."

"Don't tell me what I can and can not do, and it's not even like I planned this. Geeze haven't you heard the expression that you can't chose who you love?"

"I have, but I want Rory." He whispered to his friend. He hoped she would understand that his heart was taken. He hoped she was still joking.

" I know that Huntzberger. I just thought I'd get it out there." She paused and observed the obvious tension. She did have a way to complicate matters.

The two of them averted their attention to inanimate items around the Manhattan apartment, anything to keep them from confronting the issues at hand.

Across the city in a little more unstable neighborhood two friends sat on the roof of a bar. Rory was holding an empty shot glass, Amy held a martini glass delicately in her hand. Rory grabbed the bottle of liquor, she wasn't sure what she was drinking, and refilled her shot.

"Maybe you should slow down. Maybe we could do some of that talking you offered earlier." Amy advised. She was met with a spiteful glare. Rory took the shot and cringed. She wiped the excess liquid on her sleeve and sighed.

"I miss him." Rory announced suddenly and Amy was clueless as to who this 'him' was.

"Who?"

"My son. I miss him." Amy was shocked to say the least. She never thought of Rory as a mother.

"Oh, is he with his father?" It was a simple, innocent question that stabbed at Rory's heart.

"His father is Todd." Amy nodded, she knew all about Todd and what he had done to Rory.

"Well then, where is he, I'd like to meet him someday." Amy loved children. She really did, she hoped that one day she would have some.

Rory felt he heart break and she didn't know why. Her subconscious was trying to tell her something, she fought back out of fear the only way she knew how; she took another shot.

"He's in Florida, with some friends of mine. I guess I just couldn't do it, be a mother. Which is quite funny, Ames, because everything I do, I master. And all this time, being so far away from him, not there to hold his hand when he crosses the street, not being there for his first words, to calm him down after a nightmare, and the list goes on, you know. I feel like I've failed. I failed him, I failed my mother, I failed Todd and myself. God I hate myself, every fucking day I blame myself for his dea…" She cut herself off, she couldn't control what she said anymore. Because through all her tears and heart wrenching pain, she could have sworn she was about to say he was dead, that her beautiful baby boy was dead. But she knew the truth, she knew her son was alive and living a life she couldn't give him.

Amy was a smart woman, she could easily fill in the missing words. Rory had a son. Had, the past tense. Her friend's son was dead. But what confused her was how Rory kept speaking about him in the present tense. She didn't know what to do, so she hugged her friend, offering her silent support.

"He must hate me, you know. For leaving him. He is so beautiful, my friends, the ones he's staying with, they send me pictures. He always looks so calm, so beautiful. It's hard to imagine he'd know what hate is. He must hate me, 'cause I hate myself for doing that to him. I left him without with a father and a mother." Rory broke off into another fit of sobs.. Her chest felt so heavy she couldn't breathe. Amy rubbed her back.

Amy was confused. She either misheard before or her friend was in denial. She had no qualms about questioning her own intelligence but for some reason she chose the latter. She figured Rory had some kind of psychological disorder brought on by stress and trauma. The poor girl, she boyfriend randomly attacks her, almost kills her and then her son dies. Amy figured if was her, she'd probably be in a mental institute as she doesn't possess the kind of strength Rory clearly does, to just put the past behind her and live.

"Are you okay?" Amy gently asked her broken and sick friend.

"I wanted to go to my mother, but god, she'd be so ashamed. I mean her situation was so much worse than mine and she managed to make it work. And me, I just bail. I run away, I cower and hide. I can't even face the reality of it. And I still just want my mommy to make it work. And you know maybe, if I stayed with her, if I accepted all the fucking faces of sympathy in that stupid small town, things would've been different, you know."

"Everything will be okay." Amy replied. Truth was she could barely hear the poor girl's tale through all the crying.

"Everything will be okay." She repeated a few times more until she and young John took her home, well to Amy's apartment as they didn't know where she lived.

The next morning found Logan asleep on the couch and Casey frantically trying to get everything ready. Her client was supposed to come over for a meeting. They both decided it would be more welcoming and more productive.

"Logan, get out." She hissed into his ear. She had tried shaking him, she tried yelling into his ear, she was about to push him off onto the floor when he stirred.

"Casey? Where's…"

"She didn't show up, now you have about ten minutes to get your ass out of my apartment. An important client is coming over for coffee. So scoot, come back later tonight."

"Work? On a Sunday? That's just wrong." He rolled off the couch and moved for the bathroom. Seven minutes later he was out the door. He may not be in love with Casey, but he respected her.

Twenty minutes later Casey buzzed her client upstairs and frantically threw the blankets in her roommate's room and closed the door.

"Hey, nice to see you again." Casey greeted her client with a smile and a handshake.

"Yes, now lead me to the coffee. It's far too early for handshakes and business." Lorelai said while surveying the apartment. It was classy but had a hint of crazy. She smiled, it must be Casey's roommate who added the crazy.

"I agree, I had a hectic morning. My alarm didn't wake me up, and then I had to frantically clean, get ready and kick the guy who is madly in love with my roommate out. All in a morning's day." Casey said as she led Lorelai to the coffee, they sat down at the kitchen table.

"So did you get anything done for the dragonfly?" Lorelai asked going straight to business as it was too easy to just sit and chat with Casey all day.

"Did I mention the guy madly in love with my roommate who I am in love with?" Casey knew it was a crappy excuse, but she thought it might work on this particular client.

"Hmm, you did. So I guess we're starting from scratch."

"I'm sorry. I mean it's no excuse it's just didn't get the work done. Yeah, I'm a slacker." Casey sheepishly replied as Lorelai seemed unimpressed.

"It was creative, I'll give you that." Lorelai laughed to try to ease the mood a little. Today was just a hard day for her. It was the day when Rory came home from the hospital after what the monster Todd did to her. It would be two weeks before Rory wasn't in her bed.

"Ok so, I figure we could get the basics done. What do you hope this ad will accomplish?" And so they went about their way talking about the quaint little inn nestled tightly in Stars Hollow.

Across town in the city suburbs in a tiny little two room house laying on a cozy gray couch was Rory Gilmore. After having drunk herself into a stupor and cried herself into oblivion she fell into a restless sleep full of tossing and turning and waking up periodically calling out for her son, Benjamin. When she woke up, for the last time, she was hung over and confused. But she smelled the sweet smell of coffee and followed her nose to the kitchen.

"Want some coffee?" Amy asked her with a bit of an edge to her voice. She hardly slept at all last night because of Rory's lack of a good sleep. And then around three o'clock she couldn't fall asleep so she called up her mother and her good friends to see if they could recommend a therapist to Rory. However, they all thought that since Amy didn't know the full story that she should stay out of it. In fact her mother insisted that even if she did know the whole story to just keep her nose out it considering it didn't seem like Rory's _condition_ was a threat to her life or anybody's life. Amy was a stubborn fool and chalked it up to the fact that she had woken them up at three thirty in the morning.

"Did I do something wrong, you seem bitter?" Rory asked. Her head was pounding.

"I just didn't get much sleep last night is all." However Rory was a good friend and she wasn't in any position to ruin her life.

"Oh I'm sorry. I know how you feel though, I feel like I didn't sleep a wink. And then I wake up with a splitting headache and I didn't know where I was. I must tell you though, I was quite relieved to find you here in the kitchen instead of some creepy guy." Rory laughed. Amy smiled at her story telling ability.

"Yes, well I have to go, brunch with my mom and all. You can leave whenever, just lock up." Amy grabbed her purse and her keys.

"No, no I'll go now. Thank you for taking me home, I must have been a complete wreak last night. And the drinking couldn't have helped either."

"Yeah, I suppose. Tequila seems to be your Achilles heal, Gilmore." They laughed and walked out the door. They went their separate ways.

Rory walked into her apartment. The two women stopped talking to look up at her. Rory closed the door and walked off into the direction of her room while taking off her smelly tequila stained shirt.

"Uhg. Why do I do this to myself? I mean ever time I drink tequila it fucks with my mind and I end up in someone else's living quarter. And I don't even remember drinking it, I just wake up with a tequila hangover and assume it was from the massive amounts of alcohol I drank. And I never sleep either, I'm always haunted by the same fucking tequila induced nightmare. And it doesn't go away. I wake up and that should be the end of it, but no, it isn't I wake again in another hour so to the same disturbing images." Rory stopped and took a breath. She surveyed her room.

"Casey, what did you do to my room?" She yelled.

Casey cringed and looked down ashamed even though Rory couldn't see her. Lorelai looked amused, but was struck with a feeling of familiarity. In fact in pained her to think that Casey's Gilmore roommate was no other than her prodigal daughter. She pushed the hopeful thought out of her head and smiled at their tactics.

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you. Tell me the truth."

"Well your lover boy was waiting at beck and call for you, but you ever showed up because you were in your tequila induced coma, and I gave him some blankets, but you see I woke up late and my client was coming over soon and I guess I might have thrown the blankets in your room to quicken the cleaning process." Casey explained in a childish tone, hoping to get sympathy for being so pathetic.

"Casey! How could you? You know I'm a bit of an organized freak."

"a bit of…" Casey mumbled under her breath. Lorelai laughed out loud, again suppressing the Rory thought.

Rory walked out of her room.

"I didn't quite get that. Oh and to help clear up some misinformation, he is not my lover boy, he's a love sick puppy trying to rekindle something that in all actuality never existed, because if it did he wouldn't have left me." She stopped and stared at Casey's client.

"Oh! Lorelai Gilmore this is my roommate Rory Gilmore. And Rory vice versa." Casey jumped in and introduced the two of them who were stuck in some kind of staring contest.

"Rory." Lorelai stated trying to keep her voice even.

"Mom." Rory acknowledged without noticing. Casey flinched at the predicament. Her secretive roommate was face to face with her mother, who she had no contact with for years.

Rory's eyes shifted to the door and then to the floor. They shifted back to the door and she held her gaze there while considering if it was worth it to run out those doors, or if she should just suck it up and face her fears.

"Go ahead kid, run." Lorelai noticed the shifting eyes and she'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it too. She purposely called her kid because if she ran then she was still a kid in an adults shoe.

Rory was tempted to take her up on her offer but she realized that all she ever wanted was her mom to hold her again after all these years. She took a step forward and then practically fell into her mother's welcoming arms. She felt like she was home.

A/N: sorry for the delay but you see, I'm not used to a social life. Plus I'm back at college and I have to sleep and party. Sorry for the long delay again. Maybe if I get a lot of reviews I would write the next chapter a little quicker than this one.


	8. An Album of Realizations

I do not own Gilmore Girls, I'm not sure i'd want to either considering where the show is going.

Chapter 7: An Album of Realizations

Casey shifted her weight between her feet. This was the most uncomfortable moment ever, in her life anyway. She didn't know what to do. What could she do? Just stand still and watch her roommate crumble into her client's arms. It wasn't that she'd never seen Rory cry before, it was just she had never seen Rory so willing to accept comfort. Rory always portrayed herself as strong and independent. Sure, occasionally Rory would break down and curl up into a heap on the floor, but she was only human. Casey knew that she shouldn't be observing this moment, that it wasn't her place to be a fly on the wall.

"Err. Umm. I'll just leave you two alone." Casey croaked out, however as she backed away into the hallway leading to her room her words went unnoticed.

Rory held onto her mother and cried like she had never cried before. She couldn't believe this was happening. She couldn't believe she had a death grip on her mother. She couldn't believe that her mother didn't hate her for disappearing all those years ago.

"Mom," Rory sniffled and took a step back attempting to let go of her mother, but Lorelai just took a step forward. Lorelai was too afraid that Rory would run again.

"Mom, I've missed you." Rory took another step backwards only to have her mother follow her.

"I'm not going to run. Gilmore's don't run." Rory slightly laughed through all her sniffles and tears.

"Well, I don't know about that. You seem to run a lot." Lorelai finally let go of Rory. She looked at her daughter and her eyes involuntarily traced Rory's fragile frame. She flinched when her eyes spotted the scar on her face caused from Todd's attack.

"Have you…" Lorelai paused and sniffled back some tears.

"Have you, um, lost some weight?" Lorelai smiled, trying to lighten the mood. There was just too much crying in the room right now.

"Oh mom." Rory started laughing as she walked closed to her mom embracing her another hug.

"I've missed so much, haven't I?" Rory asked her mother after a few moments of silence.

"Well Kirk got married, it was a Halloween wedding. He was Frankenstein and Lulu was his bride, you know the black hair with white lightning streaks. It was so funny and romantic. Big old Herman Munster, that was played by Luke, broke down into tears. It was so sad to see the town loony all grown up." Lorelai told the story with as much passion as she could muster.

"Oh my, that sounds like Kirk." Rory looked down at her hands. She should have been there, she shouldn't have left.

"Mom, I'm so sorry, I'm such a jerk." Lorelai just hugged Rory harder.

The mother and daughter pair made their way to the couch and snuggled up against each other. They held onto each other as they recounted their lives stories and cried when they brought up old memories, like the whole Dean saga, the road trip to Harvard, Friday night dinners, etc.

"Ehhem. Excuse me ladies, but are you two going to be eating with me, or am I going to have to eat all by lonesome?" Casey interrupted, she tried to stay in her room as long as she could but it was driving her crazy.

"I could eat." Rory responded and Lorelai nodded her head.

"Great, well I ordered Chinese food. It should be here soon." Casey paused and smiled at how comfortable they were with each other.

"So have you guys been catching up?" Casey asked feeling the need to be included. She felt bad but she was a woman with selfish needs.

"Yes, we have. Seems that this little one doesn't want to reveal much of her current life to me, though. She's making it so hard for me to find out if she's changed or not." Lorelai and Casey shared a chuckle at how stubborn and closed lipped Rory was.

"Hey shut up!" Rory threw a pillow at her mother but missed and hit Casey instead which was perfectly acceptable for Rory.

"So Rory, there is one thing that I have been dying to ask?" Lorelai looked at her daughter to make sure she could proceed. Rory shrugged and raised her eyebrows.

"Well when you left, you were pregnant." She paused as she heard Rory take a deep breath.

"And I guess I'm wondering where my grandbaby is?" For some reason Lorelai treaded softly while she spoke the words. She had feeling that the answer she was looking for was not one Rory wanted to discuss. And as it turned out she was right because Rory just got up and walked to her room. Lorelai shared a look with an astounded Casey before getting up and following.

"Lorelai, wait." Casey called out to her.

"I know Rory is your daughter and you want to be there for her and you want to know why it's a touchy subject, but the Rory I know would not want you to follow her. She likes to be alone. And even if she didn't, I really don't think you can help her." Casey was so sick of having to tell people that Rory is different than she was several years ago.

"Do you know anything about it?" Lorelai had no problem asking other people about Rory. After all she had done it for several years.

"No. As I far as I know, knew, she doesn't have a kid. She never talks about ever having one, of course she avoids talking about everything."

"Oh. So I guess all the toys and clothes and stuff I've been buying for years to give to my grandchild was a waste of money, because I don't have one." Lorelai remarked with a bitter tone in her voice. She didn't know the situation but suspected that her grandchild was put up for adoption. Lorelai sighed, she couldn't really blame Rory for not wanting to keep a child that would forever remind her of Todd and his violent behavior. She shivered as the thought occurred to her. What if violent tendencies could be passed down through the generations?

Lorelai let out a deep breath as she accepted the situation. Rory was a different person. She was a grown woman. She was silent and obviously missing her eccentric personality but from what Lorelai could see, Rory was comfortable. She was relaxed and at ease. She had a great roommate, perhaps the perfect one to keep balance and order in the house. From what Lorelai noticed Casey was several notches down in the crazy level than Paris. Whatever had happened in the last few years had changed Rory and Lorelai would be an ignorant fool if she denied seeing the change in her daughter since as far back as Logan. And as much as she hated Logan, she wished he would have never broken her daughter.

"Lorelai?" Casey waved her hand in front of Lorelai's face trying to get her attention. Lorelai looked at the hand and grabbed it, almost forcefully.

"You're going to hurt someone one day if you keep that up." Lorelai retorted as she glanced down the hallway that Rory retreated down.

"Don't you mean someone's going to hurt me?" Casey playfully questioned as she pulled her hand back. Casey sighed as she followed Lorelai's gaze.

"She'll get over it, I mean she always does." Casey paused as Lorelai turned to look at her.

"I wish I could say something other than 'she's changed' but I can't. I mean I've never known this Rory that everybody keeps talking about. I never seen any sign or indication or slip of her being the Rory you want her to be." Casey paused again. Lorelai looked perplexed during her speech but made no attempts to interrupt.

"Rory, she's well happy. As happy as she can be, I guess. I think she's still haunted by the Todd thing, I think she still visits him. I've always had my suspicions that she goes to see him and I have always thought that that's when she allows herself to slip, to be herself." Casey stopped and looked down the hall, what she was about to say could ruin everything with Rory.

"Sometimes I get the impression that she's repressed some thoughts. That she's in denial about certain things, like her kid I guess. I know that she's never copped up to her running away. I think deep down she regrets it, so she doesn't think about it. She's probably just trying convince herself… She's gone through so much pain, so so much pain, as I'm sure you are aware of. She just doesn't want to deal with the pain beneath the surface. She doesn't know how." Casey spoke in a low volume and carefully picked out her words. She watched as Lorelai leaned in and listened intently to her every word. By the end both women were in tears.

Lorelai couldn't take it anymore. She had to go to Rory. Casey, knowing this pointed in the direction of Rory's room, telling her that Rory's room would be the one with the closed door.

Rory sat on the floor in her closet. She just couldn't deal. She needed to disappear. She needed to get drunk off her ass, even though she still had a hangover. She sighed and then started to cry, her body convulsing into fits of anguish. She wiped away the few tears that came and stood up. She moved around some boxes until she found a photo album. It had a white crate paper cover and on the bottom right corner it had the words 'It's a boy' sewn in a pretty blue thread. In the center there was a picture of her holding her son maybe a day or two after giving birth. She had looked so happy there. She had looked like herself, she looked like she had finally found her peace of mind and could return home, home being the comforting place within herself.

She cautiously opened the book, afraid of all the emotions it would release. She was afraid that she wouldn't be able to handle the all the pain that lived inside those pages. She was afraid she would become so overwhelmed with emotions that she wouldn't want to go on… to tomorrow. Rory remembered a time when this book held so much joy, so much pride. She remembered a time when this book was what she lived for, or more specifically what was inside made her smile and feel like she was on top of the world. And now, now all she felt was that the world was weighing her down.

Nevertheless she continued on her crusade. She didn't know what she was fighting for, but she figured the answer would be inside the book. Rory looked down at the precious title page which held a picture of her baby all wrapped up in a blue blanket. Underneath the photograph, Rory traced the delicate handwriting:

'Benjamin Richard Gilmore

September 17, 2008

4:37 am

19 inches

6. 2 lbs.'

It hurt, Rory couldn't deny that. But still she trekked on, she turned the pages wishing she was back in Florida, sitting in Kay's old rocking chair cooing Benny boy to sleep by telling him the story of his birth and each picture in the album. Rory nearly broke into tears as her fingers traced the DVD of Benny's first word, first semi sentence. She had written: "I've never been more proud of him, and I'm sure he'll make me proud many times over. I've never been more proud of myself, for creating such a beautiful and SMART boy." The second part, Rory recalled, she had written the day he had died, the day she died.

And finally after so many heart wrenching pictures, she finally turned to the last page. It was nothing special, it wasn't done up with pride like the other pages. A newspaper clipping, a photograph, and a piece of paper were simply thrown into the crease of the book. It was Benny's obituary, a picture of his grave and tombstone and a poem she had written the day of his funeral.

"To my Benny boy,

To my pride, To my joy

You were my life, You are my life

You were my Benny, You are my Benny.

Today is the worst day of my life

Today is the day you are no longer mine

Today is the day I died

'Cause Benny boy, I need you

'Cause Benny boy, You need mommy too.

Baby, I'm so sorry I couldn't do more

Baby, I'm so sorry, you deserved more

Baby Benny, I love you

Baby Benny, I don't think I can ever love again

Baby Benny, So many if only's

So many what if's

Baby Benny, I don't know how to forgive myself

'Cause you are all I had, and now I have you no more

Oh god, I just can't do this without you…"

The rest of the poem had been smudged by her tears. And she was in so many tears now. She wiped her face dry and unfolded the piece of newspaper. She held back her screams and yells. She restrained herself from throwing the book to the floor and trashing her closet and her room. She stopped herself from ripping the piece of paper into millions of pieces. She stopped herself from running away, because she'd be a fool to deny that she didn't want to run when the pain became too much. She looked down at the newspaper and read: 'Today is a sad day as we say goodbye to Benjamin Richard Gilmore, Sept.17, 2008-May 21, 2009, whose life was short lived but whose memory will stay will us forever. He is survived by his…"

Rory sniffled and swallowed her tears. She stood up and opened her closet door, still holding the newspaper clipping. She stepped into her room and looked at the dreary appearance. The walls were not cluttered with pictures and art work from Benny like she had imagined. Instead they were blank aside from the light brown paint. There was no stuffed toys on the floor that she hadn't picked up yet since Benny's last visit. Because the truth was, Benny hadn't really visited. She looked at her bed, and on top of the massive pile of blankets Casey had so kindly thrown into her room sat Benny.

"Hi Momma. Will you read me a story?" Benny asked her, his blue eyes gleaming in the poor lighting. His smile shinning up at her. And his brown hair was messy and out of control, it sort of reminded her of Finn's hair. She fell to her knees.

"Momma, what's wrong?" Benny's voice so full of concern and sadness. He, too, knew what must happen now. But he denied it and ran to his mother and hugged her tightly.

"I'll make you better, Momma. I'm the man now, it's my job." Benny laughed knowing that the best medicine for a Gilmore was laughter.

"Benny, you know I love you, right?" Rory asked as she held on tightly to her son.

"Mommy, what's this about?" His childish four year old voice held fear and understanding. He really was a SMART boy.

"I'm sorry Benny, but you're not real." Rory sobbed into his shoulder. He really would have been like his father. And it occurred to Rory right then, that she had always imagined Logan as his father.

"Momma, how's that possible?" Baby Benny asked as tears spilled from his deep blue eyes.

"You, you're… Benny you died." Benny leaned forward and kissed her cheek making 'smack' noise. When Rory opened her eyes she was hugging air. She stood up and plopped into the pile of blankets.

For the millionth time Rory wiped her tears away. She stood up and walked out the door and collided with her mother.

"Oh hey." Rory remarked quickly in order to leave. She was on a mission.

"Rory, hun? Are you okay?" Lorelai grabbed her arm to keep her from running.

"I'm not running mom, I just really have to do something." Lorelai let go of her daughters arm and stood back defeated.

"Oh here, I think it will answer your question." Rory quickly handed her mother the newspaper clipping before rushing out the door, barely remembering to grab her keys and purse.

A/N: I would just like to say thanks to my readers and reveiwers. I am sorry about the delay in updates but you can't rush creativity. Also i hope you enjoyed this chapter, it was hard to get out. By the way the poem is an original, if you hadn't noticed. And i'm not too proud of it, but remember Rory wrote it after her son died, she was barely coherent. Anyway I don't know where the story is going to go, it seemed to side track my outline. For instance I had no idea what to do about her mental problems, but i figured that went well. Also i wanted to spend more time with Lorelai but as it turned out Rory had to go see someone, who i hope you are all intelligent enough to know it is Logan. I had planned to downplay logan a lot more since Lorelai's entrance. But oh well. Anyway this story is a mystery right now, so ideas are welcome.

Also i would just like to say that although it seems Rory has found a solution to her hallucenations, she is still a little on the crazy side. And do not, i repeat, do not expect Logan to make anything better. Rory is a strong, independent woman who doesn't need a man to make things right. Whether Logan is stupid enough to try, I don't know yet.

Thanks for reading and please review.


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